Singaporean regulator outlines safety guardrails for financial AI agents

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has released a white paper, prepared with financial institutions and FinTech companies, on safeguards for AI agents used in finance.

The document, titled Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR), sets out a framework intended to help financial services firms use AI agents in a safe, secure and dependable way when carrying out financial tasks.

SAFR was developed through MAS' BuildFin.ai initiative, which focuses on the responsible development and use of AI tools in the financial sector.

The paper addresses the growing use of AI agents that can act on their own and operate at speeds that are difficult for humans to oversee directly.

In that context, it says firms need safeguards that work in real time to keep those systems within mandates and risk limits.

Under the framework, governance checkpoints are used to check and log actions proposed by an AI agent before those actions are carried out.

SAFR builds on the AI Risk Management toolkit under MAS' Project Mindforge, concentrating on how controls can be put into operation at the moment an AI agent takes action.

The white paper describes safeguards such as policy bound execution, real time validation, auditability and interoperability, and how these can be incorporated into operating systems so firms can use AI agents in a more consistent manner.

Participants in the project applied the framework to a range of use cases.

These include payments and treasury functions, where autonomous agents can handle routine transactions within set mandates to reduce friction in operations.

Other examples included wealth management and advisory processes, where AI agents assess documents and produce structured reviews within tightly defined tasks, supporting compliance checks.

The framework was also used in client engagement work, where AI agents prepare client insights and draft materials within approved content limits, allowing staff to support clients more efficiently.

MAS said industry participants interested in the work can join the BuildFin.ai work group and contribute to later versions of SAFR.

The Future of Finance Institute (FFI), announced recently, is expected to support adoption of the framework by helping organise industry pilots and sandbox testing.

"Singaporean regulator outlines safety guardrails for financial AI agents " was originally created and published by Retail Banker International , a GlobalData owned brand.

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