Data play a central role in the delivery of financial services - a role magnified by the rapid evolution of technology for their collection and sharing in the digital era. This introduces great opportunities for making access to finance more inclusive, as well as for creating a more efficient and innovative financial services sector in the region. However, harnessing data to achieve these goals will require significant adjustments in the legal, policy, regulatory and institutional ecosystem, major features of which have been designed to deal with issues before the advent of the digital revolution and the rapid growth of cross-border value chains. Reform of this ecosystem is now needed to ensure the continued integrity of financial systems and protection of consumers, to deal with the new challenge of cyber resilience, and to realize the potential of technology in advancing financial inclusion, integration and innovation.

Using APEC's collaborative framework, the public and private sectors are coming together to develop a roadmap that can show the way forward to reform this ecosystem.

This conference seeks to identify the most critical building blocks of an enabling regional ecosystem. It will outline concrete, achievable and practical initiatives and actions that public, private and international stakeholders can undertake collaboratively to put these building blocks in place, step by step, over a reasonable multi-year time frame. The roadmap that will emerge from this conference will form the basis for wider discussion across the region and presented to the APEC Finance Ministers for their consideration and endorsement. It is hoped that this roadmap will provide a practical guide for undertaking the legal, regulatory and institutional reforms that can help harness data for the development of more inclusive and efficient financial services in the Asia-Pacific region.