IMDA Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI
Launched 22 January 2026 at the World Economic Forum and updated to version 1.5 on 20 May 2026 after feedback from more than sixty organisations. The first governance framework built specifically for AI agents capable of autonomous planning, reasoning and action. Voluntary, and structured around four dimensions: assess and bound the risks upfront, make humans meaningfully accountable, implement technical controls and processes, and enable end-user responsibility.
Why it matters for autonomous finance
Singapore did in January what the US declined to do in April. The MGF is the closest existing analogue to what MARQUE describes, and it converges independently on the same load-bearing ideas: bounded autonomy, action boundaries requiring human approval, and accountability that stays with a named human rather than distributing into the system. Version 1.5 extends it to multi-agent systems and third-party agents, which is the systemic question. Any institution writing agentic policy should read this first, whatever jurisdiction it operates in — it is the most developed thinking available.
What it does not cover
Voluntary, Singapore-scoped, and not financial-sector specific. It sits alongside MAS's separate expectations for financial institutions rather than replacing them. Adopting it will not satisfy a US examiner, and it does not attempt to resolve who owns an agent's output or how model provenance is represented.
Silent on chain of title, on drift as a quantified trigger, and on conformance. Every entry in this register carries this section. A standard read past its scope is worse than no standard, because it produces confidence without coverage.