Huy Nguyen Trieu is the author of the new book The AI-fication of Jobs. He is the co-founder and Ms. Tram Anh Nguyen of the London-headquartered Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE). As a global FinTech knowledge platform, CFTE opened its Abu Dhabi office earlier this year and its Singapore office.

A leading voice in the world of AI, Huy’s book is the product of 10 months of effort and debuted at the recent Singapore FinTech Festival in early November 2024. It explores how AI reshapes the workforce and moves beyond the common question of “Will AI take my job?”

Huy shares with Regulatory Ramblings host Ajay Shamdasani how his book provides a structured framework for understanding AI’s impact from displacement to augmentation and how such changes and trends can be leveraged for future success and insights. It is an accessible, future-focused guide and a must-read for anyone interested in AI’s role in shaping careers, industries, and society.
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As Huy puts it: “AI is a complex, personal topic – 85 percent of workers believe it will significantly impact their jobs. But understanding what that means is often confusing.”
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Huy goes on to describe his professional background: He is an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature. As a “big picture” person, he’s interested in the revolution in technology that is transforming finance—what he calls Disruptive Finance.

To quote Huy: “Put simply, we are facing a Napster moment: technology is set to revolutionize finance, which will massively impact the global economy, business, and society.”

His passion, he says, is building and growing businesses—especially in changing environments. This passion led him from being a tech CEO in New York to managing director at an investment bank in London to founding partner at a Hong Kong-based accelerator and now co-founder of the CFTE.

As a managing director at Citi, Huy grew a business that helped Europe’s largest insurance companies, major pension funds, and international banks adapt to an increasingly complex environment.
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He also adores teaching at scale, having co-created some of the largest FinTech courses in the world at Oxford University’s Said Business School, the University of Hong Kong University, Imperial College, and now CFTE.
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As CEO of The Disruptive Group, he’s developing a firm that builds innovative finance businesses that leverage technology and advises CEOs of large organizations. One of TDG’s projects is the CFTE, which is dear to Huy’s heart as he explains the impetus for the body’s creation.

“CFTE is the answer to a very simple question: as a professional in financial services, how do I acquire the skills to be future-proof? The question is simple, but the solution is hard because there is much knowledge to acquire, the industry is changing all the time, and professionals do not have time to learn,” Huy says.  “Together with hundreds of experts [from heads of innovations in banks to CEOs of challenger banks and CEOs of FinTech venture capital firms], we have created a platform that helps the industry acquire this knowledge quickly, from FinTech to artificial intelligence to open banking,” he concluded.

A key observation of the book is that AI and its massive impact on careers portends a shift that will give rise to a class of “supercharged professionals” – those who combine their skills with tech to thrive like never before. And then there are the “creative disruptors,” a select few poised to build entirely new industries from scratch. Huy urges us all to embrace this future, not just for ourselves, but to ensure the potential benefits of AI for everyone.
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“On average, we are all about average most of the time. Yet, the results that can be gained through AI are now consistently above average,” he warns while acknowledging there are no easy answers to how the workforce can ‘raise their game’ to avoid redundancy.
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In addition to London, the CFTE is also based in Singapore and Hong Kong and earlier this year opened an office in Abu Dhabi, given the deep need in the Middle East and, in particular, the GCC nations for education in the technologies that will shape the future of work. The CFTE works with most Tier 1 financial institutions, governments, and central banks.

The Regulatory Ramblings podcasts are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong—Reg/Tech Lab, HKU-SCF Fintech Academy, Asia Global Institute, and HKU-edX Professional Certificate in Fintech, with support from the HKU Faculty of Law.