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Singapore has unveiled a roadmap for strengthening its status as an Asian financial hub, with the aim of growing the sector more than 4 percent per year and creating thousands of jobs.
“With technology transforming the way financial services are produced, delivered and consumed, it is critical that Singapore’s financial sector also transforms to stay relevant and competitive,” the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said Monday.
One focus is encouraging the adoption of technology to increase efficiency, the central bank said.
The MAS said it will take steps such as collaborating with financial institutions to create common utilities for services including electronic payments, as well as investing in research to develop solutions such as “distributed ledger technology” for inter-bank payments and trade finance.
The central bank will also expand cross-border cooperation agreements with other fintech centers to help grow Singapore as a base for foreign start-ups and will harness technology to simplify financial institutions’ regulatory compliance.
Chua Hak Bin, Maybank Kim Eng economist, said a challenge for Singapore is striking a balance between staying at the forefront of technology and ensuring that technology is not too disruptive for the sector.
“You want to encourage these things to take off and yet at the same time, you want to balance that risk... that some of this new technology could actually be disruptive to your major local players,” Chua said.
Between 2016 and 2020, Singapore aims to average 4.3 percent annual growth in the financial sector create 3,000 net jobs in financial services and 1,000 net jobs in the fintech sector annually, the central bank said.
(REUTERS)
