Emmanuel Daniel

Emmanuel Daniel is a Singapore-based entrepreneur, writer and global thought leader in finance. He is listed as a top 10 global influencer in the “Fintech Power50” list for 2021 and 2022. Daniel was awarded the Citibank Excellence in Journalism Award in February 1999. This was in recognition of his commitment to determining the impact of the Internet on banking.

Emmanuel was trained as a lawyer, has degrees from the National University of Singapore and the University of London, and attended a course on economics at Columbia University in New York. 

He founded The Asian Banker in Singapore in 1996 and is the Chairman of TAB Global Pte Ltd, which runs The Asian Banker, Wealth and Society, and other content and community platforms.

His first book, “The Great Transition – the personalization of finance is here", was published in September 2022. In this book, Emmanuel outlines how the banking industry will evolve from being focused on platform technologies to a level of personalization never seen before.

Emmanuel is the creator of the Excellence in Retail Financial Services programme which benchmarks and ranks retail banks according to operational and service quality and is now followed in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. 

He also founded Wealth and Society, a global programme where wealth is assessed by its relevance to philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, or impact on the environment, sustainability, and well-being of the societies.

Daniel is also a writer on personal blog and speaks at international events around the world.

Emmanuel Daniel started his career as a lawyer, after he graduated from the National University of Singapore and the University of London, and attended a course on economics at Columbia University in New York. 

In 1996, Emmanuel founded the Asian Banker, a global research and consulting house on the financial services industry that now operates across the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. He set up bankquality.com in 2014 as a “trip-advisor for the financial services industry” worldwide.

He founded Wealth and Society in 2018 as a London-based programme that tracks impact investments, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and social or environmental initiatives around the world. As an entrepreneur, he was once a member of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO), a prestigious grouping of young business owners worldwide. 

He previously served as a member of the Council on Corporate Disclosure and Governance (CCDG) in Singapore. He also served as a non-accountant member in the Ethics Sub-committee of the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) of Singapore. He was an associate member of The Asia Society. 

His first book, “The Great Transition – the personalization of finance is here", was published in September 2022. The book features forewords written by former congressman Barney Frank, the co-author of the Dodd-Frank Act set of legislations that regulate the financial services industry in the US today, and Richard Sandor, an innovator widely regarded as the “father of financial futures”.

In this book, Emmanuel outlines how the banking industry will evolve from being focused on platform technologies to a level of personalization never seen before. This book is about the transition that the finance industry will go through from its platform stage today into the "Personalization of Finance". Emmanuel Daniel uses the story of the ice trade to describe a level of personalization never seen before. It will have a profound effect on how institutions, markets, and societies will function in the network age. 

He introduces the term "financialization of everything" to describe how entire economies will interact with cryptocurrencies, blockchain and new trends in gaming to shape the personalization of society. This book is especially useful for innovators, disruptors, and policy makers looking for original ideas on finance, economics, and society shaping the industry today.

He is working towards his second book which is tentatively entitled “The Winning Civlisation” and due for publication in 2024.

He has served or is serving in advisory or consulting roles for various governments and institutions at any time, and is a well-regarded confidante in leadership circles. He is a well regarded global speaker on a variety of topics in the financial services industry, and the development and future of Asia. He is working on his first book on the future of the financial services industry. He is interviewed regularly on BBC, Bloomberg and CNBC.

Emmanuel Daniel is passionate about financial inclusion. In a recent article, he explained: "Financial inclusion as defined by the platform players, is a lie. We need to admit that the ways in which the platform players have been formulating their “financial inclusion” business models are not designed to help the poor at all. 

It is designed to populate their platforms and monetise them. There is not a single technology-driven financial inclusion model today that is designed to pass on savings to the poor or even allow them to generate wealth. Even the idea of making finance “cheaper” is an anachronism." But digital inclusion is a parallel concept that is alive and well, and it has been bringing hundreds if not thousands of poverty-striken communities into the global economy in a way that was not possible before.