The AIM Alumni Relations Office (ARO) welcomed alumni to another edition of Brewing@AIM, bringing the AIM community together for an insightful evening on AI’s evolving role in finance and the global economic outlook.
Held at the newly renovated TeaM Energy Bridging Leadership Hall, the program featured two hotly anticipated topics, expertly delivered by Singapore-based executives from Bloomberg and ING Bank.
AI in Finance
Speaking on AI in Finance, John Lagman, Bloomberg’s APAC Crypto, FX &FX Derivatives Market & Product Specialist, and APAC FX (Inc. Crypto) Campaign Lead based in Singapore, shared how artificial intelligence is transforming financial services, from lending and transactional banking to capital markets, investment research, risk management, and algorithmic trading.
Drawing on his experience in trading, quantitative analytics, and close work with banks and hedge funds, John emphasized that AI’s value extends beyond chatbots and summary generation. The greater opportunity lies in integrating AI into workflows to make financial processes faster, more efficient, and more effective.
Applications discussed included AI-assisted portfolio analysis, financial reporting, risk discovery, loan processing, compliance and anti-money laundering, accounting, and stress testing. AI can help financial institutions process large volumes of information, identify patterns and risks, and accelerate decision-making, enabling professionals to focus on higher-value activities.
As a precaution, John also highlighted important challenges that organizations must address as AI adoption accelerates. These include data quality and accessibility, fragmented legacy systems, reliability and hallucinations, model risk, explainability, cybersecurity, and regulatory accountability. In finance, where decisions often depend on precise and verifiable numbers, AI-generated outputs still require appropriate validation and safeguards.
He illustrated this through Bloomberg’s own development of AI-powered tools, including systems that combine multiple AI agents with deterministic verification layers. The approach reflects an important principle for financial applications: AI can generate insights and speed analysis, but results must still be validated before they are used for critical financial decisions.
The presentation was followed by a lively Q&A, with alumni and students asking about AI regulation, algorithmic trading, cryptocurrency, market volatility, and the use of deterministic models alongside AI.
Looking Ahead: Q4 Macroeconomic Market Outlook
The second half of the evening shifted from technology to the broader economic environment during a fireside chat between John Lagman and Leo Tay, Managing Director and APAC Head of Trading at ING Bank N.V.
The discussion examined the forces likely to influence markets in the final quarter of the year, including interest rates, inflation, US Treasury yields, currencies, equity markets, and capital flows.
A key focus was the direction of interest rates and how monetary policy expectations continue to influence markets. Both John and Leo discussed the challenge of balancing inflationary pressures with economic growth, while noting the resilience of US equities, particularly technology and AI-related stocks, despite a relatively high-interest-rate environment.
The conversation also examined the relationship between interest rates and currencies. While interest-rate differentials remain important, Leo emphasized that currency movements are influenced by a broader set of forces, including capital flows, investment behavior, and market positioning. He noted that tracking where capital is moving can provide valuable insight into market movements beyond conventional economic indicators.
Closer to home, the conversation examined the potential implications for the Philippine peso and local financial markets, discussing the country’s monetary policy environment, ongoing remittance flows, and the potential for foreign participation in the Philippine bond market as factors that could shape the local outlook.
A lively Q&A followed, giving attendees the opportunity to engage the speakers on market volatility, foreign exchange, interest rates, investment decisions, geopolitical risks, and the Philippine economic outlook.
Strengthening the AIM Community
The School of Executive Education Lifelong Learning (SEELL) team also joined the event to introduce the new Referral Program. To learn more, email referral@aim.edu. At the registration area, attendees could purchase AIM’s new merchandise. You can browse and purchase merch too through this link: https://store.aim.edu
Through Brewing@AIM, ARO continues to provide a platform where alumni can learn, reconnect, exchange perspectives, and stay engaged with the AIM community while discussing the brewing issues affecting business and society.
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to John and Leo for taking time out of their busy schedules to share their expertise with the AIM community! See you at the next Brewing@AIM!
words by Janelle Erika Santos
