Our managing partner delivered the keynote and led a FinTech ecosystems session at the Vietnam Financial Forum in Da Nang

At the Vietnam Financial Forum 2026 in Da Nang, our managing partner, Jochen Biedermann, delivered the opening keynote, moderated a working-lunch session on FinTech ecosystems, and joined a panel assessing Vietnam's international financial center buildout.

His keynote, "The Next Generation of Financial Centers," addressed three questions: what is the current frontier for financial centers, how to measure the performance of an international financial center, and how to make a financial center future-proof. Moving beyond single-score rankings, Jochen presented a functional framework that separates domestic impact, international contribution, international connectivity, and attractiveness from three complementary long-term factors — reputation & trust, innovative capacity, and resilience — before mapping how AI, tokenization, and open finance are reshaping the frontier every financial center now has to navigate.

"Future-proofing is not a new identity. It is strengthening what already makes a financial center durable."
— Jochen Biedermann

Jochen then moderated a panel, "Assessing the Current State of VIFC Buildout," with Rich McClellan (CEO, VIFC HCMC), Stephen Glynn (International Expert for Green Finance Regulation, Evercrest Advisory), and Kevin B. Iwanaga (Director for Strategy & Engagement, VIFC Da Nang). The panel dug into investor appetite for Vietnam's two planned international financial centers, how Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang can complement rather than duplicate each other, and lessons from how centers like Astana and Dubai grew from a standing start — as well as how Vietnam positions itself against regional competitors such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok.

Jochen also gave a keynote on "FinTech Ecosystems and the Performance of Financial Centers" at a working-lunch session, drawing on his recent paper of the same name. The discussion centered on the six interdependent pillars that make a FinTech ecosystem work — actors, capital, talent, demand, enabling infrastructure, and regulation — and on diagnosing the binding constraint before prescribing a fix. He was joined by Alena Dolgova, Stephen Glynn, James Wong, Euna Kim, and Bhaskar Dasgupta.

We thank the organizers of the Vietnam Financial Forum 2026 for an excellent event, and the VIFC HCMC and VIFC Da Nang teams for their hospitality in Da Nang.