Amanda Ong on making AI adoption work for private banks. Oct 28, 2026 An AI tool can automate a banking process and still struggle to win over the people expected to use it. For Amanda Ong, successful adoption depends as much on thoughtful design and adviser confidence as it does on the underlying technology. Speaking at the Hubbis Digital Wealth Forum Singapore 2026, Ong, Singapore CEO and Global Head of Partnerships at Arta Finance, shared lessons from deploying AI across retail and private banking. She highlighted the importance of adapting AI to different working styles, preserving the human relationship and building the controls needed to operate confidently in a regulated environment. Key Takeaways * Adoption starts with flexibility. Giving advisers the choice between manual and AI-powered workflows can encourage gradual adoption without forcing behavioural change. * AI should strengthen, not replace, the adviser. In private banking, its greatest value often lies behind the scenes, improving adviser effectiveness while preserving client relationships. * Trust must be engineered into the architecture. Specialist AI agents need enforced boundaries around approved information sources, financial calculations and what they can answer. * Wealth expertise matters as much as AI capability. Deploying AI in regulated environments requires deep domain knowledge, continuous evaluation and controls that generic models alone cannot provide. Designing flexible paths to AI adoption Ong highlighted how thoughtful design can help banks introduce AI progressively, accommodating different working styles and levels of comfort with technology. She pointed to an agent developed for a global private bank, where advisers were given the flexibility to work manually or use AI-powered automation within the same interface. This allowed them to maintain familiar ways of working while gradually discovering the benefits of the agent. "They recognised that successful adoption isn't about forcing change. It's about creating an environment where advisers can experience the benefits firsthand and progressively adopt new ways of working," Ong explained. As advisers began experiencing the benefits of automation, they shared their experiences with colleagues, encouraging others to explore the agent's capabilities. What began as gradual experimentation helped build broader adoption, driven as much by peer experience as by the technology itself. Ong said this approach significantly improved adoption, demonstrating how thoughtful experience design and peer advocacy can help banks drive lasting behavioural change. AI-native from the start AI has been central to Arta's approach since its founding. The company began by serving wealth clients directly and continues to operate its own regulated wealth platform under SEC and MAS licences. Its client base, drawn largely from technology and financial services, is particularly receptive to AI-powered experiences, with adoption cutting across age groups. Arta has since expanded into serving financial institutions, extending technology developed and proven in its own regulated environment to retail and private banks. Ong described these deployments as different applications of the same underlying capabilities, shaped by the needs of each institution and its clients. In retail banking, AI can engage directly with customers, making wealth management more accessible and personalised. In private banking, it operates largely behind the scenes, equipping advisers with deeper insights and greater capabilities while preserving the human relationships at the heart of the service. Teaching banks what AI should not do As AI becomes more common across banking and investment platforms, Ong sees education as one of the biggest production challenges. Banks need to understand that deploying AI in a regulated environment is as much about defining what it cannot do as what it can. When a banker asks an investment question, the answer may need to come exclusively from the institution's own chief investment officer (CIO) research or approved knowledge base, rather than an unrestricted web search that risks fabricated information or citations. "A trustworthy AI agent needs to know its limits. Those boundaries must be built into the architecture, not left to the model's discretion. If it can't substantiate an answer from approved sources, it should say so rather than risk giving the wrong information," Ong said. The same discipline applies to numbers. Portfolio values, projections and financial plans must come from deterministic systems designed for those calculations. The AI retrieves and explains the results, but does not generate the figures itself. For Ong, this is where deep wealth management expertise matters. Knowing which boundaries to establish, and continuously testing how AI performs within them, is what distinguishes purpose-built solutions from generic tools. These controls give banks the confidence to deploy AI more broadly, and advisers the trust needed to incorporate it into everyday client interactions. Singapore CEO & Global Partnerships at Arta Finance

Arta Finance appoints Felix Lin as CEO, succeeding co-founder Caesar Sengupta. Arta Finance, an AI-driven wealth and fintech company founded by former Google executives and headquartered in Silicon Valley and Singapore, has appointed Felix Lin as its new CEO. Lin, previously the company's president and CFO, succeeds co-founder Caesar Sengupta. Lin brings extensive experience from his prior roles, including vice president of payments partnerships at Google and leadership positions as a serial founder and CEO. Under his leadership, Arta serves tens of thousands of members across more than 40 countries and is expanding globally through partnerships with financial institutions and digital banks such as Wio Invest and Bank of Singapore. Amanda Ong remains Singapore CEO and global head of partnerships. Arta is backed by prominent investors including Peak XV, Ribbit Capital, Coatue, and EDBI, along with notable industry leaders.