Stephanie Magnus

Stephanie regularly advises international banks, capital markets intermediaries, fund managers, insurance companies, fintechs and other financial institutions on financial services compliance and regulatory matters, and works closely with her clients to navigate these matters.

She has significant experience in compliance, and focuses on regulatory issues, particularly in the financial services, insurance and commodities sectors. Her practice also includes mergers and acquisitions in the financial services sector. She also actively helps financial services clients in merger and acquisition transactions, particularly where these transactions involve the acquisition or sale of regulated financial services companies.

In the fintech space, Stephanie has been involved in contributing to policy formation, and regularly advises on fintech models including equity and debt crowdfunding, digital wealth platforms, payment service models, consumer credit models, e-wallets, digitalisation, tokenisation and digital assets. She has been recognised as being "deeply involved" in the discussions around payments legislation along with being "very good at marrying traditional financial advice with innovation."

• Advised private capital platform CapBridge Platform Pte. Ltd. on its successful application to the Monetary Authority of Singapore to operate a private markets securities exchange known as 1exchange in Singapore. 1exchange is the first regulated private securities exchange in Singapore.
• Assisted M-DAQ, an affiliate of Ant Financial, Alibaba's financial arm, on its successful application to the Monetary Authority of Singapore on a payment services licence, and provided general advice on ongoing compliance and regulatory requirements, taking into account M-DAQ's unique business model.
• Advised Asia Wealth Platform (operating under the name "StashAway") on its successful application for a capital markets services licence for fund management. StashAway is a digital wealth management platform providing personalised and automated portfolio management services to both retail and accredited investors. StashAway is one of the first fintech start-ups and robo-advisors in Singapore to obtain a fund management licence.
• Advised DBS, UBS and SBI on Singapore's first digital native bond pilot as part of Project Guardian by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, a collaborative initiative with the financial industry that seeks to test the feasibility of applications in asset tokenization and DeFi while managing risks to financial stability and integrity.
• Advised UBS on the issuance and distribution of tokenised bonds.
• Advised as Singapore counsel for Sumitomo Life Insurance Company (“SLIC”) in relation to SLIC’s acquisition of all of the remaining shares in Singapore Life Holdings, the parent company of Singapore Life Ltd, a leading insurer in Singapore. SLIC, which is one of Japan’s largest life insurance companies, previously held a minority stake in Singapore Life Holdings.
• Advised Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company, Limited on its acquisition of First Capital Insurance Limited, one of Singapore’s largest non-life insurers.
• Advising financial institutions on consumer protection and financial protection laws under the Securities and Futures Act and Financial Advisers Act in Singapore.
• Advising and running investigations for banks and other financial institutions in respect of various potential breaches of financial regulation, including AML/KYC, market misconduct and/or insider trading provisions.
• Advising banks, insurers and capital market intermediaries in respect of the feasibility of setting up operations in Singapore, and assisting clients with licensing and regulatory issues. These include assisting with and securing a licence for (i) recognised market operators under the Securities and Futures Act, (ii) general and life insurers (and reinsurers) under the Insurance Act, (iii) capital markets services licences under the Securities and Futures Act, (iv) payment services licences under the Payment Services Act (v) financial advisers licences under the Financial Advisers Act and (vi) credit card and credit-type businesses under the Moneylending Act and Banking Act.

• Ranked Band 1 for FinTech in Singapore, Chambers FinTech since 2019
• Ranked Band 2 for Banking & Finance: Regulatory in Singapore, Chambers Asia Pacific since 2017
• Ranked Band 2 for Banking & Finance: Regulatory in Singapore, Chambers Global since 2017
• Ranked as a Leading Individual for FinTech and Financial Services Regulatory: Local Firms in Singapore, Legal 500 Asia Pacific since 2016
• Ranked as a Leading Individual for Insurance: Local Firms in Singapore, Legal 500 Asia Pacific since 2022
• Recognised as an Acritas Star in 2019, based on a global study involving over 6,500 clients who nominated lawyers they consider as stand-out

• Academy of Law
• Law Society of Singapore

• London