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.

For small businesses, a key barrier was a lack of trust in non-bank channels. For migrant workers, going to a formal business premise and submitting to a customer due diligence process was intimidating and discouraged some workers from approaching formal remittance channels. This insight allowed us to focus on new ways of allowing workers to conduct remittance without physically visiting an office, such as through mobile channels. Another solution that proved to be very effective was bringing MSB services to the workplace. As a group and in their own familiar surroundings, we found that workers were more comfortable in dealing with formal MSB companies face-to-face. I am also pleased to inform that as previously announced, the Bank has finalised guidance that will allow money service business companies to conduct e-KYC for on boarding customers. This in turn will facilitate an end-to-end electronic process for performing remittance transactions below specified limits without a customer having to physically visit an MSB office. For small businesses, our outreach programs were opportunities we could use to explain the regulatory framework for MSB companies and avenues for redress, thereby increasing confidence in the use of formal channels. Had we focused only increasing or providing information on access points, we would not have achieved the results that we did. Second, small ideas can make a big difference. As I alluded to earlier, language barriers presented considerable challenges in getting our messages across to migrant communities. To overcome this, the industry identified Greenback “ambassadors”, who were individuals from countries of the migrant communities.