Building a First AI Agent: HeLa Labs at Singapore FinTech Youth Day 2026

What Happened

In late July 2026, HeLa Labs took part in FinTech Youth Day 2026, hosted by the Singapore FinTech Youth Chapter. HeLa Labs' CTO, Kerching Choo, led a hands-on workshop, walking them through the basics of building their first FinTech AI agent.

The framing, per HeLa Labs' own announcement: "Artificial intelligence is reshaping financial services, not just by automating tasks, but by enabling entirely new ways to build products, deliver services, and solve real-world problems. The next generation of fintech innovators won't just use AI. They'll build with it."

Why This Kind of Session Matters

A lot of AI-in-finance discourse stays abstract -- automation, efficiency, cost savings. Workshops like this one flip that: instead of talking about what AI agents can do, participants build one themselves and see the mechanics directly. For a technology that's still unfamiliar to most people entering finance and fintech careers, that hands-on gap matters more than another slide deck.

It's also a small, concrete example of a broader thing worth naming: teaching "build with AI" as a skill in its own right, not just "use AI as a tool," to people who are about to enter the industry that AI agents are increasingly operating inside of.

Q&A

Who ran the workshop? Kerching Choo, CTO of HeLa Labs, led the session for the Singapore FinTech Youth Chapter's FinTech Youth Day 2026.

Who was it for? Fintech students and young professionals.

What did participants come away with? Hands-on guidance to build their first FinTech AI agent, plus a grounding in why AI agents are becoming core infrastructure in financial services rather than a bolt-on feature.