good customer outcome should focus on, among others, whether customers are provided with accurate and sufficient information, and whether the products or services provided to the customers indeed suit their needs. on a day - to - day basis, imagine that a frontline staff wants to keep a customer happy by simply doing away with all the due diligence procedures, so as to complete a transaction quickly to save the customer ’ s time. surely the customer, who may be in a hurry, would feel that time is saved and therefore happy on the spot. but it would be doubtful whether the products or services acquired in this manner would really suit the customers ’ needs. and when it led to losses subsequently when market conditions turned against the customers, there could be complaints coming your way. therefore, perception mismatch among frontline staff about what really represents “ good customer outcome ” is something that banks must be careful to avoid. 8. another interesting observation from the exercise is about perception of performance gauges. an area that banks have been putting a lot of emphasis in the past few years is reducing the weight of financial performance in incentive systems. nevertheless, our review found that the perception of incentive structure differs greatly among different staff levels. more simply put, while senior management and supervisors think that the incentive systems are more balanced among business targets and non - financial factors such as compliance and customer outcomes, frontline staff generally still take financial performance and business targets as the highest assessment priority. this possibly reflects that some other forces maybe at work, such as social interaction and recognition among bank staff. 9. the hkma published the final report of this review last month. we highlighted in the report the above observations and a number of other interesting points which, i think, is definitely worth a read. in the report, we also put forward incentive system design principles and useful practices identified from the review. we are in the meantime collating the observations on individual participating banks, and will communicate the useful findings to them individually. i truly hope that banks will make good use of the review outcome to assist in their ongoing risk culture journey. mandatory reference checking scheme 10. another important piece of our bank culture efforts is the mandatory reference checking scheme ( or in short, mrc scheme ). we and the industry both realise that no matter how hard one tries to encourage desirable staff behaviour through a proper incentive system, and as much as we hope that bank staff will always behave with integrity, we cannot naively assume that this will always happen.

##quip our talent pool with the right set of skills to face the upcoming challenges. recently, there have been media reports about talent shortage in hong kong. i ’ m sure you will appreciate that hong kong is a small open economy with a significant and vibrant financial industry. so it is really natural to see people come and go. undoubtedly, the travel restrictions given the need to contain the spread of covid would have brought a degree of inconvenience to travellers, in particular expatriates with families elsewhere. we at the hkma have maintained a close dialogue with the industry and reflected the views of the industry to the government. despite the tough balancing act of pandemic controls and facilitating travelling, i ’ m pleased to see that our travel restrictions have in fact been adjusted gradually in the past few months. 16. talking about the overall talent landscape, in fact many markets around the world are facing the very same issue of talent shortage. in recent years, the increasing prominence of fintech and green and sustainable finance have been a game changer to the global financial industry. financial institutions across the globe are actively looking for experts with relevant knowledge and skillsets to help develop innovative fintech solutions or sustainable investment products, manage the climate risks, so on and so forth. 17. many markets resort to competing for talent globally by trying to secure talent from other jurisdictions to fill the gaps. i would not deny that this is a convenient short - term solution. but since fintech and green finance are longer term trends, i firmly believe that the most effective solution is to nurture more home - grown talent. that ’ s why the hkma is currently working on two fronts. on the one hand, we are working hard to upskill existing practitioners to ensure that they keep pace with developments of the industry. on the other hand, we are actively reaching out to universities and secondary schools, seeking to attract more new blood for the industry and better prepare those interested young talent for a long - term banking career. 18. so let ’ s talk about existing practitioners. our enhanced competency framework ( in short, ecf ) comes in handy here. the ecf has been playing a key role in enhancing the competency level of our banking practitioners, through providing systematic training as well as industry - recognised qualifications. to date, more than 16, 000 practitioners have obtained certifications in various professional areas under the ecf. at the end of last year, we added a new “ fintech ”