Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

MAS working on creating ‘good jobs’ for Singapore workers in the financial sector

SINGAPORE — Some 2,800 new jobs were created in the Republic’s financial sector despite the slowdown setting the industry’s growth rate at 0.7 per cent from 5.7 per cent in 2015, according to Mr Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

SINGAPORE — Some 2,800 new jobs were created in the Republic’s financial sector despite the slowdown setting the industry’s growth rate at 0.7 per cent from 5.7 per cent in 2015, according to Mr Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The central bank said on Thursday (June 29), it is working with financial institutions to identify early on jobs that might be at risk in the future. “We then work with these financial institutions to proactively up-skill these workers through professional conversion programmes,” Mr Menon said.

MAS is also working closely with the industry to build the relevant skills and competencies at all levels within our financial institutions. “The sector will disrupt many existing jobs no doubt, but will also create many good ones. Jobs and skills have moved to front and centre of MAS’ financial sector development agenda,” Mr Menon added.

With digitisation and automation gathering pace, many global financial institutions have been restructuring their operations, downsizing and retrenching staff, mainly in back office functions such as operations, IT and technical support.

The sector, however, continues to hire in the areas including compliance, risk management, insurance underwriting, and asset and wealth management. In the area on technology, demand continues to be strong for talent in cyber security, data analytics, network architecture, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Earlier this week at the Association of Banks in Singapore’s (ABS) annual dinner, Finance Minister Mr Heng Swee Keat said that Singapore banks will be allowed to operate or invest in digital platforms or ecommerce that match buyers and sellers and businesses in the process of online sale of consumer goods and services.

Barring areas such as property development and the provision of hotel and resort facilities, the investment will be capped at 10 per cent of the bank’s capital. The changes are significant given the prior regulatory framework separating banks’ financial and non-financial businesses introduced in 2001 to keep banks focused on their core businesses.

“E-commerce is catching on… We see non-financial institutions (FIs) offering a variety of services on digital platforms. Then payments become part of it, sometimes they do lending, advisory. So they are encroaching into the territory of FIs which are strictly regulated and has compliance burdens. We are not going to stop that given the consumer benefits. But, we do need to make sure that FIs can compete on a level playing field, and they can broaden their range of services. But, we are careful and don’t want FIs to get into non-financial businesses in a big way,” Mr Menon told reporters at a briefing on the central bank’s annual report.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.