SINGAPORE – Singapore’s coveted status as an international financial hub has been painstakingly built over the past 25 years, but the fast-changing world and the technological forces being unleashed are creating challenges for policymakers as they try to preserve the country’s pivotal role in the global economy.

There are uncomfortable parallels now to the time in the 1960s when a financial crisis – the collapse of the British pound as the world’s dominant currency of trade and finance – prompted a national sea change.