2024 Highlights

14th Annual SKBI Conference on Transition Finance

Jointly organised by SKBI & SGFC, this conference is curated to foster constructive dialogue across the key thematic areas, "Transition Finance in the Asian Context", "Blended Finance – De-risking versus Concessionality" and "Digital Transition – How AI Assists Digital Transition".

Launch of
SKBI’s Monthly Newsletter

The newsletter provides a unique platform to connect academic researchers and industry experts. It aims to enhance the outreach of academic studies, while fostering dialogue on key insights and challenges and stimulating new ideas and collaborations. View past editions of the newsletter.

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Industry Workshop: Human or Artificial Intelligence – Perspectives of a Global Quantitative Investment Powerhouse

Featuring Co-Founder, David Siegal, and CEO, Kenny Lam from Two Sigma, this workshop gave participants an insight into how advanced technologies—including AI and machine learning—have been deployed, and how human components will evolve.

2024 Five-Star Asia Pacific Workshop
in Finance

This workshop aims to provide an open platform, bringing together scholars from top research institutions in the Asia Pacific region. This is the first time the workshop is held in Asia Pacific extending the scope of the Five-Star Workshop in Finance in China, which has been organized for 11 years covering 10 leading finance research institutions in China. View slides presented.

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Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) Survey

Latest findings from SInDeX show that One-year-Ahead headline inflation expectations remained unchanged at 3.8% in September 2024 compared to that of June 2024. Consumers’ headline inflation expectations, trending downwards since June 2023, have flattened in line with general global trends in major economies, in spite of continued but circumspect restrictive monetary policy. 

SMU Financial Literacy, Inclusion
and Technology Programme

Formerly known as Citi Foundation-SMU Financial Literacy Program for Young Adults, the programme has now rebranded to SMU Financial Literacy, Inclusion & Technology (SMU FinLIT) Programme. This rebrand kicks off an exciting new chapter in their mission to spread financial knowledge in a fun, inclusive, and tech-savvy way.

Graduation Ceremony for the
Asian Financial Leaders Programme (AFLP)

Over 40 business leaders celebrated their graduation from AFLP this October. In his speech, Guest-of-honour, Alvin Tan, Minister of State for the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, highlighted the critical role of financial leaders in navigating an increasingly uncertain world marked by geopolitical tensions, climate challenges, and rapid technological change.

Industry Workshop: AI Meets Finance - A computer science & industry perspective

Moderated by Hong Zhang (SKBI), the panel featured esteemed computer science experts and industry veterans, David Cui (ex-Merrill Lynch), Benedict Lim (GIC) and Feida Zhu (SMU).  During the session, the panellists explored the burgeoning intersection of AI and Finance. Download the event summary here.

SKBI Seminar in Financial Literacy:
Introduction to Private Credit

Joint CEO of one of Australia's leading private credit asset managers MA Financial Group,  Chris Wyke,  gave a highly subscribed seminar on private credit. During the seminar, he explored the fundamentals of the asset class, its key benefits, the diverse market segments it encompasses and why private credit is attractive in an era of higher interest rates. Watch the recap here.

SKBI Seminar Series: Expected Returns and Large Language Models

SKBI Distinguished Visiting Faculty, Prof Dacheng Xiu, shared from his working paper titled "Expected Returns and Large Language Models. In this presentation, he shared insights of how state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and LLAMA can be used to extract contextualised representations of news text for predicting stock returns.

Highlights from the Asian Financial Leaders Programme (AFLP)

Participants of the Asian Financial Leaders Programme travelled to various countries over the 10-month programme, learning first hand from faculty at top universities and leaders of trailblazing organisations who are at the forefront of innovation, industry trends, and global financial practices. Watch highlights from the China module here.

SKBI Seminar: Inflation, Cost of Living & other Wicked Problems

Using data and analysis,  our esteemed panellists, Dr Taimur Baig (DBS Group Research), Prof Hong Zhang (SKBI), Prof Massimiliano Landi (SMU) shed light on possible challenges and ways of dealing with cost-of-living increases and personal financial decisions. Catch the event reply here.

MyNiceHome @ SMU

Organised in collaboration with the Housing & Development Board, the SMU Financial Literacy, Inclusion and Technology Programme engaged over 600 students and young adults. Over the two-day roadshow, young adults exchanged aspirations & concerns faced in the process of planning to purchase their first home and learnt useful information and tips on homeownership.

Summer Study Group organised by SKBI

Over the course of the summer, SKBI organised the Summer Study Group to give PhD students a platform to discuss papers, receive feedback on their work and learn from each other as well as from faculty members. Papers discussed covered topics such as FinTech, Machine Learning, Product & Labour Market Competition and more.

SKBI Webinar: AI Research & Applications in the Era of Big Data and "Large" Models

In this webinar, AI Expert, Professor Dejing Dou gave an overview of the development of AI since the 1950s. He emphasized that Big Data and Large Language Models are the most important components for AI today and highlighted some machine learning topics including healthcare, federated learning, climate change, and safety issues.