CIMB

CIMB Group is the 5th largest bank in Southeast Asia and one of the region’s foremost corporate advisors. It is also a world leader in Islamic finance.

The Group is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and offers Consumer Banking, Commercial Banking, Wholesale Banking, Islamic Banking, Wealth Management, and Digital Payment Products and Services. It is the fifth largest banking group by assets in ASEAN and, as of the end of March 2024, had over 34,000 staff and around 25 million customers.

CIMB has around 33,000 employees and a wide retail branch network with 1,080 branches in 18 countries, covering ASEAN and major global financial centers.

Group Chief Data & AI Officer

AI MALAYSIA (AIM)

Incorporated in early 2025, AI Malaysia (AIM) was formed as under the Regional and National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engagement Platforms strategic initiative, one of the 12 strategic initiatives for ASEAN-BAC Malaysia's 2025 Chairmanship, to enhance economic integration, inclusivity and regional collaboration.

As an AI national and regional engagement platform, AIM is mandated to focus on the following objectives:

- Foster collaboration and innovation among government, industry, and academia to advance AI adoption in Malaysia.
- Contribute to shaping policies and regulatory framework that promotes AI adoption while ensuring adequate guardrails.
- Improve awareness and promote adoption of AI across industries in Malaysia.
- Connect Malaysia's AI ecosystem with ASEAN and global counterparts to harmonize policies and foster cooperation.

Founding Advisory Board Member

How AI Will Shape Our Future

Packed with expert insights, the book addresses critical questions: How will AI alter employment, education, and global geopolitics? What ethical dilemmas will arise as humans interlace with AI through cyborgs and synthetic biology? Can we prepare for superintelligence and its utopian—or dystopian—outcomes?

Written for professionals, students, technologists, and all curious minds, this book demystifies complex AI concepts while offering actionable strategies for navigating rapid AI advancements. Drawing on history, economics, and philosophy, it paints a vivid picture of AI's potential to redefine humanity.

Whether you’re seeking to understand AI’s present or prepare for its future, this indispensable guide equips you to stay ahead in an ever-changing world.

In this book, one of the foremost global experts on artificial intelligence provides profound insights into pressing questions. He explores controversial topics such as superintelligence, synthetic biology, AI’s role in global competition, particularly between the U.S. and China, its impact on future warfare, and its increasing influence on our personal and family life. Will we see true human-cyborg coexistence, potentially altering our species' evolution? Will artificial intelligence bring about humanity’s extinction, or propel us to unprecedented heights?

Get a fresh perspective and explore approaches that will empower and inspire you to innovate and thrive in the face of AI's inevitable reality.

- Humanity interlaces with AI: AI is our new mind. Robotics, our new body. How are we becoming a new species at the intersection of carbon and silicon?
- AI gets exponential: Artificial General Intelligence. Humanoids and cyborgs. Synthetic biology. Quantum computing. Mind emulation. How will they unfold?
- Humanity’s greatest epic: From Aristotle to Sam Altman. From Leonardo to Boston Dynamics. From today to Superintelligence.
- Stay ahead with AI: Critical thinking. Adaptability. Entrepreneurship.

Bestseller Author

True Corporation

True Corporation is Thailand’s leading telecommunications and digital services provider, offering mobile, broadband, pay-TV, and digital solutions to millions of consumers and enterprises. Following its 2023 merger with DTAC, True is now the largest telecom operator in Thailand, combining the strengths of CP Group and Telenor Group. Beyond connectivity, True drives innovation in fintech, cloud, AI, and digital platforms, positioning itself as a key enabler of Thailand’s digital economy.

Led a Data & AI Business Unit with full P&L ownership in a high-growth technology environment:

-Achieved 8x revenue growth within 18 months by scaling commercial AI product lines.
-Directed development of AI-driven solutions—including AdTech, credit scoring, customer intelligence, and data enrichment—leveraging 9 petabytes of behavioral data from 30 million telecom subscribers.
-Oversaw a cross-functional team of 150, including AI engineers, data scientists, ML Ops specialists, product managers, and B2B sales, while managing Data & AI infrastructure with a USD 15M budget.

Deployed Enterprise-grade Generative AI Applications at Scale:

- Engineered a large language model orchestrator integrating OpenAI and LLaMA to drive autonomous campaign generation and hyper-personalized language optimization in marketing. 
- Successfully scaled across high-volume advertising use cases. 
- Established a scalable AI operating model in micro-lending, defining organizational structure, AI agent model pipelines, data governance, and AI platform architecture.

Commercialized AI-Driven Data Products at Scale:

-Deployed real-time contextual intelligence to trigger hyper-personalized marketing campaigns via SMS, in-app ads, and call centers for clients across banking, retail, and e-commerce sectors.
-Built behavioral credit scoring and fraud detection engines for 30M users, leveraging payment and browsing history to enhance financial decision-making.

Chief Analytics & AI Officer

Forbes Technology Council

- Selected for invitation-only community of top-tier CIOs, CTOs, and tech executives.
- Authored multiple articles on data sharing, AI, and analytics, featured on Forbes platforms.
- Provided actionable insights to global audience, influencing technology trends and strategies.
- Engaged in collaborative discussions and networking with industry leaders.

Official Member & Contributor

Antler

- Prototyped a startup solution focused on enhancing cash management for small businesses by automating invoice collections through robotic process automation and facilitating digital payment channels.
- Successfully developed and validated a functioning proof of concept in collaboration with Singaporean small businesses, demonstrating the viability and potential impact of the proposed solution.

Entrepreneur In Residence

Axiata

Axiata Group Berhad is one of Asia’s leading telecommunications and digital conglomerates, with operations spanning multiple markets across South and Southeast Asia. Headquartered in Malaysia, Axiata owns and operates mobile operators and digital businesses in countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, and Myanmar. The Group also has significant investments in tower infrastructure, fintech, and digital platforms. Guided by its vision of Advancing Asia, Axiata plays a central role in enabling digital connectivity, financial inclusion, and technological innovation across the region.

Successfully managed data + AI initiatives across ten subsidiaries, reporting to the Regional CEO, driving marketing & sales growth through machine learning with a USD 110 M impact, while also creating new revenue streams and optimizing operations.

Boosted marketing & sales through machine learning:

- Generated a top-line impact of USD 110 M through data-driven marketing (5% of EBITDA).
- Raised prepaid revenues by 3-5% in 4 countries with a recommendation engine with a personalized price 
- Increased ARPU by 8% and decreased churn by 5% with a location-based solution to prioritize sales.

Created new revenue streams with data: 

- Created credit scoring and fraud models based on telecom data with 80% accuracy for two Indonesian banks, a microfinance institution in Sri Lanka, and a fintech.

Optimized operations: 

- Created a model that prioritizes network site locations with augmented data, such as customer, network quality, and competitors’ data; allocated USD 500 M, leading to savings of USD 100 M.
- Standardized a hybrid data architecture, including a platform for rapid experimentation; created data governance and privacy policies and procedures, including anonymization.

Group Vice President of Data Analytics

Transformed marketing and product innovation with data-driven digital strategies, achieving USD 63M in revenue across digital campaigns, product launches, and channel optimizations, while also enhancing customer experiences through tailored digital offerings and voice-enabled chatbots.

Shaped digital marketing through data analytics:

- Established a growth hacking team to manage digital campaigns on websites, e-commerce sites, and apps by running systematic marketing experiments, with an impact of USD 16m.
- Launched churn, up-selling, and cross-selling campaigns based on digital data never used before, such as social, web browsing behavior, or digital advertising records, leading to a 3-5 % increase in revenue.

Launched digital products:

- Launched a new fully digital product for wireless home broadband bundled with on-demand video streaming; created apps for sales, customer service, and field services. Revenues: USD 7m.
- Full P&L for new product sub-brands with data-led pricing techniques, leading to USD 40 M in 3 countries.

Created digital channels:

- Deployed a new website, app, and e-commerce site to deliver tailored digital offerings and experience through a segment of one: put in place scrums, defined customer journeys, and designed UX-UI.
- Digitized customer service with voice-enabled chatbots; deployed in 4 subsidiaries, saving USD 5 M.

Group Vice President of Business Transformation

McKinsey & Company

Driving growth and efficiency for clients, with achievements including developing data-driven marketing strategies for fintechs and banks, establishing customer experience frameworks for telecom operators, and leading lean sales transformations for retailers.

Fintech & financial services: 

- Created a data-driven marketing strategy for a fin-tech start-up providing online micro-loans to customers of internet retailers; developed key digital campaigns, metrics, and financial projections.
- Developed strategy for Small Business banking (including credit assessment, service model, product design, and digital marketing), increasing sales by 20%. 
- Reduced bank costs by USD 3 M (25%) in payroll, IT, general expenses, credit, and collections.

Telecom & technology:

- Established customer experience framework for a mobile operator: experience differentiators based on advanced analytics across channels, loyalty elements, governance structure, dashboards, and KPIs.
- Led customer experience in an IT support company: digitized processes; led two pilots in incident resolution involving 500 customer service agents, and increased surveyed satisfaction by 40%.

Retail & e-commerce:

- Digitized consumer onboarding process via an app for sales to interact with clients in-store; designed apps and customer journey for device sales; created a prototype and led pilot.
- Drove a lean sales transformation for a retailer with traditional and e-commerce channels, managed 21 agents, set up performance monitoring, and boosted productivity by 40% and sales by 4% (USD 50 M).

Engagement Manager

Associate

McGraw-Hill

- Launched framework to track investments in digital products in media, education and credit ratings, defined metrics, and designed a corporate venture capital fund to foster digital innovations 
- Identified business opportunities for Standard & Poor’s to provide sustainability-related financial information to the water industry and recommended potential acquisitions and partners to the CEO council 
- Defined strategy for education in Latin America, conducted market research on professional and vocational education, and advised the management to focus on digital learning solutions in Brazil

Strategy Associate

Pedro Uria-Recio is a globally recognized leader in Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, and digital transformation, with over 20 years of experience driving enterprise-wide impact for Fortune 500 companies and top-tier financial institutions. As Chief Data & AI Officer at CIMB, Southeast Asia’s 5th largest bank (USD 160B in assets), Pedro is spearheading the deployment of next-generation AI platforms, GenAI agents, and enterprise-wide data strategies to enable full-scale transformation across retail, commercial, and wholesale banking.

Previously, Pedro held senior AI leadership roles at leading Asian conglomerates including True Corporation and Axiata Group, where he pioneered innovations in autonomous AI marketing, AI-driven credit scoring, and digital product acceleration, generating measurable top-line growth across multiple markets. A former McKinsey & Company consultant, Pedro brings a rare blend of strategic acumen and deep technical expertise—building and leading high-impact AI teams that deliver commercial outcomes at scale.

A respected voice in the global AI community, Pedro was a visiting lecturer on AI in Business at Chulalongkorn University, a Forbes Technology Council member, and a two-time TEDx speaker. He was named one of the Top 100 Global Innovators in Data and Analytics (2020) and received the Cloudera Industry Transformation Award (2019) for breakthrough work in applied AI.

Pedro is the author of the bestselling book "How AI Will Shape Our Future" (2024), now translated into seven languages and a #1 Amazon bestseller across the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany. He frequently delivers keynotes and executive briefings worldwide on the monetization of GenAI, AI agent ecosystems, and scaling AI responsibly across the enterprise.

He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and is passionate about bridging emerging AI capabilities with business strategy to deliver innovation, resilience, and long-term value creation.

It was a pleasure to meet David R. Hardoon, Global Head of AI Enablement at Standard Chartered in this very interesting panel at Singapore FinTech Festival. It is always a privilege to speak with him, whether our paths cross in Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, or even Baku in Azerbaijan. 

I was also pleased to meet the leaders of Infosys Financial Services: Dennis Gada, Global Head of Financial Services, Gitartha Ojah, Asia Financial Services Leader, and Andrew Groth, APAC EVP.

A few insightful points stood out from our discussion:

- Stop doing proofs of concept and focus on scalable impact.

- AI governance is not about saying no, but about defining how. If the project team cannot do the how then the answer rolls back to no.

- AI Governance must be standardized. Decisions cannot be handled one by one by committees; they require clear, consistent rules and systems.

- We underestimate our people. Most employees already use AI in their daily work.

- A time will come when talent will avoid joining banks that restrict AI usage.

A stimulating conversation with leaders shaping the future of AI in financial services.

#singaporefintech

Pedro URIA-RECIO

Chief Data & AI Officer | ex-McKinsey | Best-selling Author | Driving Scalable AI Adoption and Impact in Banking, Telecom & Insurance

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