Today IBM InterConnect has revealed the launch of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services. It offers the essential building blocks for the creation of financial services apps on the IBM Cloud.

More than 100,000 individual and enterprise developers from the financial services industry already turn to IBM monthly for insight and support. Now these and more will have access to APIs, data, and content to build and monetize cognitive-enabled financial services apps quickly and at scale for FinTechs, banks, wealth management firms and insurance companies.

Initially available in beta, developers will also have the ability to build in customer insights, regulatory compliance analytics, security, privacy and compliance readiness to help reduce the time needed for development and testing. The new tools can simplify the time-consuming tasks of selection, mapping and data integration, allowing developers to use IBM services or combine them with their own data. "We have extensive expertise in financial services with 97 percent of the world's largest banks relying on IBM. At the same time, IBM has become the leading AI platform for business," said Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, Industry Platforms. "Our experience across financial services and in the commercial deployment of AI with enterprise and start up builders has informed these new tools. We're excited to see how they put them to work to quickly create the latest solutions powered by cognitive computing and blockchain for everything from new payments directives support, and even regtech solutions."

With the support of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the central bank of Singapore, IBM also developed the Singapore FinTech Hub, which is linked to IBM's financial services developer cloud. The Hub will serve as a catalyst to support Singapore FinTechs by providing information about local policies and developments in the ecosystem, access to cognitive and other APIs, insight to accelerate innovation, and a platform to showcase made-in-Singapore solutions to the world. "The launch of the hub will help accelerate the growth and influence of Singapore-based FinTech companies to be part of the worldwide ecosystem of API providers. Their solutions and APIs will become available to the global developer community, expanding their market reach beyond Singapore," said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS.