Varun Mittal is a commercial and product fintech leader with deep expertise in building, scaling, and transforming financial services across Southeast Asia. He has led multiple high-growth ventures from inception to exit — including Singlife (acquired by Sumitomo Life) and helloPay (acquired by Ant Financial/Alipay) — creating sustainable enterprise value at the intersection of technology, finance, and ecosystems.

As Chief Digital & Innovation Officer at Singlife, Varun drives new product and distribution innovation, ecosystem partnerships, and emerging technology initiatives, including establishing the company’s AI Centre of Excellence. Under his leadership, Singlife achieved the highest market share in Singapore’s digital life insurance segment (2022), launched two InsurTech accelerator cohorts, and executed four embedded-finance partnerships.

Previously, as Partner and Global Emerging Markets FinTech Leader at EY, he built and led fintech and digital-banking practices across 130 countries, supporting financial institutions, regulators, and private equity investors. He advised on digital strategy, licensing, and M&A for leading banks and fintechs, overseeing over $4B in transaction value and 70+ scale-up partnerships across ASEAN.

Earlier in his career, he led ASEAN payments for Samsung and developed regional mobile-payment solutions at Singtel, following his role as first marketing and sales hire at helloPay, where he scaled the business to 20M+ users, $1.5B GMV, and a 154-member team across six countries within a year — culminating in its acquisition by Ant Financial. 

Singlife Experience 

• Led Singlife Digital Products and Platforms, overseeing consumer platforms, financial advisor offerings, and policy servicing, serving over 1.3 million registered users, 600k+ digital users, and maintaining 130k+ monthly active users.

• Launched new propositions at Singlife Innovation like platform worker benefits, mental health , independent outpatient plans, embedded health subscription offerings, shift-based insurance leading to 20m+ incremental APE, 80K+ customers.

• Launched Singlife Connect, Singapore's first insuretech accelerator program comprising 12 Proof of concept and Commercial launches with 15 startups serving advisor led and direct-to-consumer insurance distribution models.

• Set up Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence to embed Generative AI in workflows across the organisation, building 16 POCs comprising 35 teams and 82 employees, becoming only insurer globally to get Oracle Generative AI Award.

• Honors and Awards: -Best Mobile App of the Year, MAS Fintech Partner of the Year

EY Experience 

• Led fintech practice in 130 countries in emerging markets comprising a team of over 100 professionals focused on building fintech, blockchain, payment, digital bank, regulatory policy and financial inclusion projects.

• Managed digital solutions & client management for 10 ASEAN markets with over 2000 professionals working with financial institutions, regulators, internet technology companies, conglomerates, and private equity clients

• Operated EY Fintech Hub as a Global platform enabling clients to discover and engage with 30+ fintech propositions for ten customer segments across the domains of digital banking, fintech, lending, insuretech, payments and blockchain

• Developed EY Global Fintech operating model focused on professional services monetisation through corporate innovation, regulatory and compliance certifications, and growth strategy offerings with 70+ active scaleup partners

• Honors & Awards - MAS Fintech Leader of the Year 2019, MAS Fintech Leader of Year 2021

helloPay Experience 

• Launched helloPay Partner Network (HPN) for implementation partners and helloPay Developer Network (HDN) for developers to build and deploy solutions on top of core helloPay systems

• First Marketing and Sales hire of helloPay, first pan-SEA wallet, scaled helloPay team to 154 in 12 months as Regional Head of Operations, spread across 6 countries, first venture outside China acquired by ANT Financial (Alipay)

• At helloPay, led partnerships with card schemes, acquirers, banks and merchant partners to enable acceptance and engagement on Lazada and helloPay in South East Asia for 20M+ users and $1.5 Billion GMV

• Honors & Awards - EY Accelerating Entrepreneur of the Year, 2016