It was in Singapore that Queen Máxima of the Netherlands made her first public appearance after disappearing from the radar for two weeks. Queen Máxima will attend the three-day Singapore FinTech Festival, an international forum on technological innovations for financial services.
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The Dutch royal family had completely disappeared from the radar in the last two weeks. Like every year, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima take around two weeks off during the autumn holidays. Usually, we know that the royal couple goes to recharge their batteries in their second home in Greece, but this year the destination was not confirmed. Queen Máxima's last official engagement took place on October 23 and her very first appearance since then took place on the other side of the Earth, on November 6 in Singapore.
This small state in South-East Asia – three times smaller than Luxembourg – is popular with royalty. In a few days, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden will make a state visit there with Queen Silvia. Singapore, an archipelago that includes a large main island, is located at the southern tip of mainland Malaysia, which itself lies south of a peninsula shared with Thailand.
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Queen Máxima attends the Singapore FinTech Festival
Queen Máxima's trip to Singapore is one of many field visits she is making around the world on behalf of the United Nations. Queen Máxima is Special Advocate to the United Nations Secretary-General for Financial Health, a new role granted last September and which is a continuation of her previous role. For 15 years, she was the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Ambassador for Inclusive Finance for Development. This is an evolution of the function, which no longer focuses solely on developing countries.
From November 6 to 8, Queen Máxima attends the FinTech Festival sessions after opening the Global Fintech Hackcelerator. The hackcelerator is a competition for representatives of FinTech companies and financial service providers. In recent months, they have worked together to develop financial products and services that contribute to the financial health of households and businesses.
On Wednesday evening, Queen Máxima spoke with the CEO of the Dutch development bank FMO and on Thursday, Queen Máxima was able to share her personal experience after her 15 years working for financial inclusion. The Singapore FinTech Festival is the largest conference on this topic, with around 66,000 participants from 150 countries.
Nicolas Fontaine
Editor-in-chief
Nicolas Fontaine has been a designer-editor and author for numerous Belgian and French brands and media. A specialist in royal family news, Nicolas founded the site Histoires royales of which he is the editor-in-chief. [email protected]
