Beyond Words: AI, Local Languages and the Next Frontier of Communications Surveillance in 2026

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Financial institutions across Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the broader APAC region are facing a rapidly shifting communications surveillance landscape. The rise of voice, multilingual conversations, emojis, slang and region-specific communication behaviours and channels are exposing the limits of traditional systems.

Regulators – including ASIC, MAS, HKMA and the SFC – are increasing expectations around intent detection, explainability and AI governance, particularly as firms adopt new technologies to manage growing communication volumes. Firms must show their surveillance tools can interpret risk accurately across languages and channels.

At the same time, a growing gap between generic AI tools and specialised financial market models is driving false positives, inconsistent transcription and translation, and added operational strain.

This session will address these challenges directly, exploring how new AI capabilities – from multilingual and GenAI models to targeted agentic workflows – can reduce noise, enhance risk interpretation and meet evolving regulatory expectations. We will also provide practical guidance on the data, governance and operating model foundations required to deploy AI safely and effectively in APAC markets.

Key objectives:

• Understand the unique communications risks across voice, chat, and mobile channels

• Learn how AI supports intent detection, translation, noise reduction, and coded-language interpretation

• Gain clarity on emerging regulatory expectations, especially in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia

• Identify the data and model governance foundations required before deploying AI

• Explore practical use cases for agentic AI in triage, summarisation, transcription and multilingual analysis

• Understand why human analysts remain critical, even with advanced AI