Beyond talk of hiring more data scientists and cyber-security experts, or automating counter and customer services, most institutions have not fully examined how changes to workflows or business strategies under different digital scenarios will impact existing jobs. It is also not uncommon for institutions to chiefly focus on ITrelated technical skills as a core competence for future workers. Yet we all recognise the speed at which technical knowledge becomes quickly obsolete. In reality, learning agility, creative thinking and behavioural insights may be far more important in future workers. In responding to technological disruptions, the implications for the workforce therefore demand much more rigorous attention than the cursory acknowledgement that it is getting today. We intend to work with financial institutions over the coming months to take this forward, beginning with a holistic assessment to better understand the dynamics of the financial sector workforce as a basis to forecast skill demand and supply under different scenarios. This in turn aims to support the formulation of strategies – both an the institution and industry level – to effectively transition the workforce. For Malaysia, with a significant majority of jobs in the high-skilled category, technology is more likely to augment and redefine job roles in the financial sector, rather than eliminate occupations altogether over the next decade. Nevertheless, some segments will inevitably face the risk of displacement. We aim to work with the industry to establish appropriate mechanisms to re-skill workers and enhance their prospects for gainful employment in different roles.

Under this framework, banks and non-banks alike collaborate at the infrastructure level through a shared payment infrastructure, while individual players compete at the product level by developing innovative value-added features. This approach is envisioned to expand the network reach at a lower cost, while promoting competition in areas that advance financial inclusion, higher service levels and the delivery of a superior customer experience. There are clear synergies to be gained from such collaborative efforts. They enable technological infrastructure to be shared across the industry. This shifts the competitive focus towards improving the value created for customers and the economy at large, rather than a race towards building proprietary networks that ultimately leads to market fragmentation. However, the effect of this is also a sharp laser focus on bottlenecks within individual firms. By levelling the playing field, firms will face a greater urgency to address internal constraints that prevent them from capitalizing on opportunities for higher growth and productivity. This may well be the most important challenge for digital leaders. Elevating the quality of financial sector growth This brings me to the quality of financial sector growth. There are two perspectives to this. First, digitisation offers enormous potential for the financial sector to achieve what was not possible before, at least not without prohibitive costs. And second, the transition to a digital economy itself calls for a re-orientation of the financial sector to meet the new business demands for financial services.