How important will technology be to continue the development of Singapore’s financial services industry?
Technology is central to how Singapore financial services are produced, distributed, and consumed. The Singapore financial sector has harnessed technology across various functions, from Risk Management, Business Analytics to Customer Services. It is now among the most tech-enabled financial centers with a vibrant Fintech ecosystem and solid digital infrastructure foundation. The banks in Singapore want to be digital to the core, embed their services in the customer journey, and nurture a start-up culture that can drive change.
The global pandemic has fundamentally changed the banking and financial services industry. As a result, many financial institutions in Singapore have repositioned their strategy to focus on developing and strengthening their digital capabilities better to address the changing needs of their employees and customers.
The government is helping to support this growth through the following bodies: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Infocomm and Media Development Authority (IMDA). The below outlines how technology will play a part in the development of Singapore’s financial services industry.
- IMDA’s Services 4.0 is Singapore’s response to the Services and Digital Economy (SDE) Technology Roadmap, envisioning Singapore delivering next-generation services that are end-to-end, frictionless, empathic, and anticipatory to customer needs.
- IMDA’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) is a virtual crowd-sourcing platform that connects and matches real business challenges or digitalization opportunities of Problem Owners to Problem Solvers. OIP aims to bring tech solutions to more businesses quickly and enable digital transformation on a larger scale.
- MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) issued a revised set of Technology Management Guidelines to keep pace with emerging technologies and shifts in the cyber threat landscape. The revised Guidelines focuses on the technology and cyber risks arising from the growing use of cloud technologies, application programming interfaces, and rapid software development by financial institutions in general.
- MAS FinTech Regulatory Sandbox enables financial institutions and FinTech players to experiment with innovative financial products or services in a live environment but within a well-defined space and duration.
Author: Andrey Yashunsky, CEO and Founder, Prytek