Press

Short biography

Dr David R. Hardoon is Managing Director and Head of Advanced AI, South-East Asia at Accenture. He was the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s first Chief Data Officer and established its Data Analytics Group. He created FEAT, established Veritas, and is the author of SAFE and The AI Failure Handbook (2026). His career spans research, regulation, banking and enterprise. Google Scholar lists 7,106 citations and an h-index of 26, as of November 2026.

Longer biography

Dr David R. Hardoon is Managing Director and Head of Advanced AI, South-East Asia at Accenture, since June 2026. He helps organisations in government, financial services and industry turn AI from ambition into results.

He holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Southampton, for the thesis Semantic models for machine learning (2006), and a first-class honours B.Sc. in computer science and artificial intelligence from Royal Holloway, University of London. Google Scholar records 7,106 citations and an h-index of 26, as of 10 November 2026.

At the Monetary Authority of Singapore he was the first Chief Data Officer and Head of the Data Analytics Group. He established the group, announced in February 2017, and later became Special Advisor (Artificial Intelligence), from July 2019. He led the AI strategy for MAS and for Singapore’s financial sector. He created the Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency (FEAT) principles, issued in 2018, and established the MAS-backed Veritas consortium.

He is the author of the Stability-Assured Framework for Entities (SAFE), 25 November 2025, and of the Global AI and Agentic AI Governance framework, April 2026. He is also the author of The AI Failure Handbook (2026, Bonufied), a handbook and a satire modelled on the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual.

He was Global Head of AI Enablement at Standard Chartered from April 2025 to May 2026. Earlier he held executive data and AI roles at the Aboitiz Group, including Aboitiz Data Innovation and UnionBank, across cement, power and agriculture. He is Senior Advisor to the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), an Ambassador for Global Women in AI, a member of the Board of Advisors to Connected Women, and a Data Analytics Advisory Board member at the SMU School of Accountancy. He has advised Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau and the Central Provident Fund Board, and was an independent non-executive director at Auto & General Services — South-East Asia.

Topics

• AI governance
• Agentic AI
• Financial services
• Data science and machine learning
• Leadership
• Policy and public sector
• AI strategy and value
• Risk and failure