XLoD Singapore 2025: The Three Biggest Takeaways—and Why They Matter for Compliance in APAC 

I’ve worked in financial crime compliance for five years, closely partnering with tier 1 financial institutions across the APAC region. It’s been a front-row seat to how compliance is evolving, and when something shifts, you can feel it. This year, at the first XLoD Singapore, that shift was unmistakable. 

It wasn’t just another industry talking shop. It reflected how financial institutions across the region are (and aren’t) adapting to a new, AI-driven compliance reality. 

From the conversations in the room and the packed roundtables, the message was clear: In APAC, the way banks and financial institutions think about surveillance, data, and regulatory readiness is evolving quickly. 

So here are a few of my personal observations from the event, based on what was said by attendees, speakers, and partners. 

1. The Nuances of APAC Must Be Considered

One of the common themes I heard was a recurring frustration: “Our global policy doesn’t really fit the APAC region.” 

Could it be that compliance leaders in the region are simply creating their own frameworks and adapting them for their local needs, possibly even without official approval from global leadership? 

Here’s what I’m hearing: 

“We get handed these global templates that were clearly built for US or UK regulations, and we spend months trying to translate them for MAS or ASIC expectations.” 

“The global team wants consistency. But we’re the ones who must explain to regulators why we didn’t adapt.” 

In reality, regulators have quite diverse expectations when it comes to data handling, outsourcing, voice capture, and escalation. Add in language diversity, market nuances, and changing operational resilience requirements, and there’s potential for a lot of friction. 

One method to address this is by adopting a modular approach: A global control center with localized logic for rules, alerts, and reviews. This allows firms to maintain global consistency while adding regional intelligence where it matters.  

That’s exactly how Shield helps firms align global and local needs. By creating a global control center with localized logic for rules, alerts, and review. Firms don’t have to break their global models, simply add tailored local intelligence on top of it. Furthermore, in addition to the 14 native languages we currently support, Shield also has the ability to build support for other less prominent Asian languages. 

2. Data Silos Are Still Our Biggest Blind Spot 

Despite all the advances in compliance tech, most firms I spoke to during the event still run voice, chat, email, and trade surveillance on separate systems. I’ve walked into more than one surveillance room where analysts are toggling between five screens and still missing context. 

In fact, at one of the roundtables I joined, a few participants spoke of their challenges in dealing with fragmented surveillance, not just from an efficiency standpoint but also how it impacted their risk visibility. 

What I’m hearing: 

“We’ve got strong models in eComms, but voice is off in another system entirely. We can’t join the dots.” 

“We know the context is there. We just can’t see it across our trade and eComms surveillance systems, which is costing us time and credibility.” 

In APAC, the challenge is compounded by multilingual interactions, cross-border privacy laws, and data residency rules that limit where and how communications can be stored or reviewed. 

Surveillance needs to shift from channel-first to context-first. AI now sits at the center of that evolution, powering the ability to normalize, correlate, and interpret multi-channel data at scale. That means normalizing data, breaking down modality barriers, and ensuring alerts can be interpreted holistically. If a voice call triggers a trade and that trade is followed by a WhatsApp message, your system needs to connect those dots. Today, most don’t. 

Shield does though. At the MQ Data webinar, one participant shared, “What stood out with Shield was how it let us see everything in one line of sight—voice, chat, and trade data all stitched together without us needing to chase it down.”  

Shield’s unified platform architecture, which is centered on its Data Hub and multi-layered AI surveillance, removes the blind spots by ingesting, reconciling, and analyzing data from 100+ sources, including structured trade data and unstructured comms like voice and WhatsApp. Alerts come enriched with the surrounding context, not isolated snippets, allowing teams to investigate the full picture faster and with more confidence. 

3. Voice Surveillance Is No Longer Optional 

Historically, voice was treated a bit like the neglected stepchild of communications surveillance. Today it’s become a priority, and not just because the West is driving the regulatory changes to support it. Institutions are also starting to realize that it’s where the real risk often hides. 

What I’m hearing: 

“It’s the most honest channel. No one’s gaming their tone of voice on a turret.” 

“The transcripts help, but multilingual accuracy is still hit or miss. We need models that understand nuance, not just translate words.” 

We had some great conversations about multilingual voice surveillance. Things that came up included:  

• accent variation 
• real-time segmentation 
• latency 
• quality 

There’s growing awareness that voice carries high-context, high-stakes information, and trying to rely on random sampling or siloed storage is no longer enough. It’s no surprise, then, that voice is no longer the blind spot of surveillance. 

Shield’s AI-powered voice capabilities make audio communications searchable, analyzable, and actionable as written ones. With high-accuracy multilingual transcription, contextual risk detection, and seamless integration across eComms and voice. It’s built for the complexity of financial environments, and empowers compliance teams to hear more and risk less. Contact us to learn more about how Shield supports voice surveillance. 

Non-Financial Misconduct (NFM): From Conduct to Culture 

When it comes to non-financial misconduct, firms are realizing that misconduct often reveals itself through tone, language, and communication patterns, not just trade behavior. 

Regulators across APAC are widening their lens, and assessing how employees speak, escalate issues, and uphold firm values as indicators of conduct risk. 

Another reason to get on board with stronger voice and conduct surveillance is that regulators across APAC are taking action on oversight failures in surveillance, data governance, and culture. 

• In Australia, APRA imposed a  USD 1 billion capital add-on on ANZ for systemic cultural failings tied to non-financial risk management. ASIC followed with AUD 240 million in penalties for misconduct that included reporting failures and poor remediation practices. 
• In Hong Kong, the Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) fined HSBC HK$2.1 million for failing to comply with telephone recording requirements under its Code of Conduct. The case involved unrecorded client order instructions. 

These actions signal a rising standard, placing communications oversight, governance, and culture firmly in the compliance spotlight. 

Shield’s NFM capabilities help firms meet the FCA’s “Should you have known?” standard by embedding proactive conduct monitoring into everyday surveillance. The platform: 

• Monitors language patterns that indicate harassment, bullying, or inappropriate behavior, surfacing early warning signs before escalation. 
• Provides full audit trails of communications for defensible investigations and FIT assessments. 
• Delivers contextual evidence with AI-driven rationale summaries and risk rankings to accelerate investigations. 
• Guides managers proactively, with workflows that log escalation decisions, ensure consistent supervision, and recommend next steps using Shield AmplifAI’s Risk Reasoning. 

By helping firms identify behavioral risk early and document their response consistently, Shield enables a defensible, transparent approach to NFM oversight—turning culture into a measurable compliance control. 

Where Forward-Looking Teams Are Focused 

After many of conversations with surveillance leads, heads of risk, and compliance officers from across APAC, here’s what I’ve learned: 

• Design globally, act locally. Many firms are still trying to retrofit global frameworks into regional realities. I’ve learned that true scalability means starting with local nuance built in from the beginning. That’s how I approach conversations with clients today—helping them bridge those global–regional gaps. 
• Unify before you optimize. Data silos remain the biggest barrier to meaningful surveillance. I’ve seen the difference that a unified data view makes, and it’s reinforced my focus on helping firms connect voice, trade, chat, and email under one intelligence layer. 
• Pilot with purpose. Voice surveillance is no longer theoretical—it’s practical. The smartest teams are piloting with intent: starting with high-risk desks, validating transcription accuracy, and building workflows that scale responsibly. 
• Use AI with accountability. Everyone’s experimenting with AI, but the real differentiator is explainability. I’m working with clients to ensure their AI models aren’t just effective, but auditable and locally compliant. 
• Build culture into compliance. Technology alone won’t solve conduct risk. The firms I admire most are those embedding behavioral insights and escalation pathways into their compliance DNA. That’s something I’m now emphasizing more actively in every implementation conversation. 

Ultimately, the leaders driving real progress in APAC are those who see compliance not just as a control, but as a culture. That’s the mindset I’m taking forward. 

Final Thoughts 

Reflecting on XLoD Singapore, what stood out most was how these five priorities—localization, data unification, voice, AI governance, and culture—are converging into a single compliance conversation. 

APAC leaders aren’t just reacting to regulatory change; they’re redefining how compliance operates across borders and languages. The challenge now is to turn these insights into measurable progress—through explainable AI, regionally intelligent frameworks, and culture-led surveillance. 

The takeaway for me is simple: the firms that succeed in this environment will be the ones that connect people, process, and technology into one transparent, adaptable system. 

That’s the conversation I’ll keep having with customers, and it’s one worth starting now. So, if you’re ready to discover how a tailored surveillance program for the APAC region can help your organization strengthen compliance and accelerate success reach out. 

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