Inside the AMR Network in Singapore: Built to evolve – the key takeaways

In a world where technology, markets and threats are constantly evolving, staying ahead means being ready to rethink how you work. As part of the AMR Network's Speed of Change event in Singapore, the panel, 'Built to evolve', brought together Sunil Frida, CMO, Zscaler, Tamas Szabo, CEO, Pepperstone and Alex Alexandrov, Founder and CEO, CoinPayments to explore what it takes to adapt with purpose.

From listening to customers and making smarter use of data to staying ahead of emerging cybersecurity threats, their discussion revealed some key lessons in building a business that's ready for what comes next.

1 | Listen to your customers

For businesses operating at the cutting edge, being first to market can offer a significant advantage. But pioneering a new technology or service doesn't guarantee that customers will use it, or that the market will develop in the way you expect.

Alex Alexandrov has seen this firsthand at CoinPayments. Founded in 2013, when cryptocurrency was still unfamiliar to many businesses, the company initially focused on payments before recognising a broader opportunity in the infrastructure supporting the digital economy.

Looking back, Alexandrov believes that willingness to adapt and to listen helped the business find its direction:

"It's about understanding where the market is going, pivoting towards the future, and then coming back to the customer to find out if that's what they actually want. Having direct interaction with customers has helped us navigate the business and stay ahead of the curve."

Alexandrov explained how features that seem compelling from an internal perspective can fall flat with customers, while seemingly simple requests can become some of a product's most valuable capabilities.

The lesson is to challenge your own assumptions. Direct customer interaction has helped CoinPayments understand where to invest, identify unmet needs and respond to changing demand.

2 | Adapt before your competitors do

The pace of change is particularly pronounced in financial markets, where information, timing and human behaviour can all influence decisions.

For Tamas Szabo, technology has transformed how market participants access and interpret information, but it hasn't removed the human element. Traders still need to manage their emotions, assess risk and make decisions in environments where mistakes can be costly.

The difference increasingly lies in how effectively they use the tools available to them.

"Speed and data play a big part in being comfortable in financial markets. The best are those who use data to their advantage, and AI is playing a big role in that now."

AI is becoming an increasingly important part of that equation, helping people make use of information and identify patterns. But adopting new technology is only part of the challenge. Businesses must also recognise how quickly the landscape is changing and adapt before their competitors do.

"It's fascinating watching things change and adapting to that as best as you can before your competitors figure it out for you."

3 | Cybersecurity must move at the speed of AI

As AI becomes more deeply embedded in business, the opportunities are accompanied by new risks. The growing use of AI agents, alongside the increasing volume of data moving between people, applications and systems, is changing the cybersecurity landscape.

In Sunil Frida’s opinion, this makes security a fundamental business consideration – not simply a technical safeguard to be addressed after innovation has taken place.

The scale of the challenge is considerable. Zscaler's platform processes hundreds of billions of transactions every day, giving the company a vast amount of activity to analyse as it works to identify and prevent threats.

"We have a platform that has 750 billion transactions a day running through it," he explained. "You've got to go faster than the threats coming your way."

Frida's point is that security cannot afford to stand still while technology advances. As organisations embrace AI, they must also consider how sensitive information is shared, how emerging tools are used and how potential vulnerabilities are identified.

He also challenged the traditional view of cybersecurity as a matter of putting barriers around a network to keep threats out. In an increasingly connected environment, protecting a business requires an approach capable of responding to activity and threats as they evolve.

The objective is not to slow innovation down, but to create the conditions in which businesses can move forward with confidence. In that sense, effective security is an enabler of progress: the guardrails that allow organisations to take advantage of new technology without losing sight of the risks.

4 | Build for complexity, not just growth

Evolution becomes more complicated as a business expands. New markets bring new customers and opportunities, but they can also introduce different rules, operating requirements and expectations.

Tamas Szabo highlighted the challenge of managing a financial services business across multiple jurisdictions. Pepperstone operates under 10 global licences, meaning it must respond to the requirements of different regulators, sometimes at short notice.

Its approach is to build flexibility into the organisation itself.

By modularising elements of its operating model, Pepperstone can adapt to the requirements of individual markets without needing to overhaul the entire system every time something changes.

It's an example of how businesses can prepare for uncertainty through the way they are built. Rather than treating every new requirement as an isolated problem, they can create systems that accommodate change while maintaining a consistent underlying structure.

The panel offered a reminder that adapting to change is not simply a question of adopting the newest technology. It's about building the mindset, systems and relationships that allow an organisation to keep moving forward. The businesses best prepared for what comes next will be those willing to learn, adapt and act before change forces their hand.

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