AI just got cheaper to adopt. What's your excuse now?

For years, the standard SME objection to AI was simple: too expensive, too technical, no time to figure it out. That objection is quietly disappearing.

UOB has expanded its AI Ready programme into AI Ready 2.0, together with IMDA. The upgrade adds enhanced financing to help technology vendors deliver AI solutions and give SMEs resources to scale applications. It also adds hands-on prototyping workshops where business owners identify opportunities, validate use cases and build working AI agents, not just watch slides.

The numbers so far suggest demand was always there. Since launching in July 2025, the programme has engaged more than 600 SMEs, run over 10 workshops and facilitated more than 800 connections between SMEs, tech providers and experts. UOB is aiming for 3,000 participating SMEs by the third year.

Here is the part worth thinking about. SMEs in the programme have built AI for sales prospecting, tender preparation and quality control. All of these run on one thing: clean, structured business data. An AI agent that reads your books, your invoices and your inventory can only be as good as the records behind them.

So take the workshops. Take the financing. But before you bolt AI onto your business, make sure your accounting and operations data sits in a system that can actually feed it. That is the layer we think about every day at OCi System.

Source: Fintech Singapore, 30 Sep 2026
https://fintechnews.sg/138309/ai/uob-ai-sme-financing-workshops/