Deepening talent pool Third, deepening Singapore’s talent pool. As we move towards providing higher value-added services, we will face more intense competition for talent. We need to deepen our talent pool by training the local workforce whilst stepping up efforts to attract foreign talent with the requisite specialist skills. The industry needs professionals with market experience and skills to deal with the increasingly complex and volatile financial markets. To meet this demand, we need to enhance our training and development initiatives. Besides co-funding financial skills training under the Financial Sector Development Fund, we are actively promoting Singapore as a financial training hub. Discussions are now on-going with the newly established Wealth Management Institute and INSEAD as well as major institutions to develop corporate training centres and corporate universities. We would also like to build up Singapore’s financial research capabilities with an Asian and emerging market focus. We are currently exploring the possibility of establishing a financial research institute, in partnership with established financial research institutes worldwide. Enhancing market discipline To enhance market discipline, we have facilitated the establishment of industry-sponsored but independently-run complaints-handling processes and mechanisms for customers to settle disputes with banks and insurers. The banking industry now has a Consumer Mediation Unit and the insurance industry the Insurance Disputes Resolution Organisation (IDRO). Presently, we are working with the securities industry to study the feasibility of an industry-based dispute resolution scheme for the capital markets.

This was a commercial dispute between AIA and policyholders, which had to be resolved bilaterally between them, whether through negotiations, industry-based dispute resolution mechanisms or the courts as a last resort. MAS could not intervene. But MAS had a responsibility to ensure that policyholders had full information of what AIA was offering them, what this was worth, and what other alternatives they had. MAS also had a strong interest in seeing IDRO, the industry based dispute resolution mechanism, work. Thus what MAS did was to ensure that information was disseminated promptly, accurately and adequately, so that policyholders could make a considered decision. We issued a policyholders’ guide to help affected policyholders understand their own policies and the options available to them. AIA was asked to issue a public statement to explain fully and clearly its support package and adjudication process. MAS also made it clear to the industry that if any dispute arose over the jurisdiction or authority of IDRO, it would have had to contemplate introducing statutory and regulatory mechanisms for dispute resolution. Full disclosure and working dispute resolution mechanisms are preconditions for a disclosure-based regime and self-reliance to work. The AIA dispute simmered for many months. Eventually AIA responded to the concerns of policyholders, including those raised by CASE on their behalf, by revising and substantially improving its offer. As this offer addressed many of the earlier concerns, MAS welcomed it publicly.