Mumbai, September 11, 2026: Rapid financial innovation must be matched by equally strong safeguards, Shri Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Chairman, Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai today.
Speaking at a session on “Innovation with Stability: Regulating Capital Markets in the Age of AI, Tokenisation and Quantum Technology” Shri Pandey underlined that “Growing fast and growing safe are not competing ambitions. A market can grow sustainably when innovation is accompanied by trust, and trust is sustained by resilience.”
The session was moderated by Mr. Dilip Asbe, MD & CEO, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Among other speakers were Mr. Hanzo Van Beusekom, Board Member, Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), and Mr. Tajinder Singh, Deputy Secretary General, IOSCO.
Mr. Asbe pointed out, “AI, tokenisation and quantum computing are bringing new dimensions to capital markets and raising fundamental questions around regulation, supervision and accountability. As technology accelerates the pace of markets, supervisory capabilities are evolving alongside it. At the same time, questions around safeguards, resilience and trust are becoming increasingly important.”
The SEBI Chairman noted that India’s securities markets have grown rapidly on digital onboarding, electronic payments, robust clearing and settlement, and transaction traceability. As markets grow larger and more interconnected, he cautioned, vulnerabilities can spread just as quickly, demanding resilient infrastructure and sharper regulatory oversight.
On technology-led finance, he said, “These technologies point towards greater intelligence, programmability, and computational power. Yet there is a common question: how do we make innovation scalable without making risk scalable at the same pace?”
Regarding quantum readiness, Shri Pandey said that migration to quantum-safe systems “cannot begin after the threat becomes real,” calling for crypto-agility and a phased transition to post-quantum cryptography, already embedded in SEBI‘s cyber resilience framework in line with India’s National Quantum Mission.
Speaking on tokenisation’s global implications, Mr. Tajinder Singh observed, “Tokenization can improve efficiency, programmability, and automation across issuance, trading, settlement, and record-keeping, but new operating models also create new dependencies and new risks.”
Adding an international perspective to the discussion, Mr. Hanzo Van Beusekom noted, “While practical large-scale quantum computers capable of disrupting today’s financial systems do not yet exist, regulators and market participants are increasingly assessing how future quantum developments could affect the security and resilience of market infrastructure.”
