The Straits Times

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will in 2025 launch two new leadership programmes under its Asian Financial Leaders Scheme. The Asian Financial Leaders Programme (AFLP) is a training programme backed by MAS for senior leaders of financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies and investment firms. A total of 372 C-suite professionals have graduated from AFLP since its launch in 2015. The programme is conducted jointly by SMU and Human Capital Leadership Institute.

Sharing his views on how to choose the right savings account, SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) Aurobindo Ghosh, who is also Director of the Citi Foundation-SMU Financial Literacy Programme for Young Adults said a main savings account needs to be readily available, with limited downtime, reliable apps, and little or no transaction costs. It also needs to have sufficient fraud detection capabilities and should be interoperable round the clock across multiple platforms such as online and mobile banking, with expense-tracking features, he added.

Singaporeans’ headline inflation expectations for the year ahead hit an 11-year high, rising to 4.6 per cent in a September poll from 3.9 per cent in June, according to the latest quarterly results of the Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) published jointly by DBS Bank and SMU on Monday (Oct 17). DBS and SMU said consumers believe that even with policies in place to ease the impact of the pandemic and its aftermath, global uncertainty and economic disruptions will negatively affect Singapore’s economic growth and inflation. SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) Aurobindo Ghosh, who is the report’s founding principal investigator, said the International Monetary Fund recently projected a slowdown in global growth in 2023, at 2.7 per cent – the weakest forecast since 2001, barring global crises such as the global financial crisis and the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. “(Our) findings seem to be tracking the global outlook of uncertainty, where Singaporeans expect a slightly negative impact on growth while overall inflation expectations heightened,” he said.

The late Pioneer Generation leader Sim Kee Boon passed away in 2007. Work on the biography finally began in December 2018 when SMU Professor of Finance (Practice) Dave Fernandez, Director of the SMU Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics (SKBI), suggested a book on Mr Sim. On Friday (Sept 23), the 240-page biography titled “Sim Kee Boon: The Businessman Bureaucrat” was launched by SKBI and Landmark Books at SMU. Mr Chan Chun Sing, Minister for Education and Minister-in-charge of the Public Service, was the guest of honour at the book's unveiling ceremony.

The latest quarterly Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) survey from DBS Bank and SMU found that people's expectations of how much prices will rise in the year ahead hit a nine-year high in March this year. The findings are in line with another survey by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which indicates inflation remains a challenge this year. SMU Assistant Professor of Finance Aurobindo Ghosh, the founding principal investigator of the survey, said “Singapore being a small, open economy is vulnerable to all these risk factors.”

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Finance and Lee Kong Chian Fellow Liang Hao, who is also a management committee member at the Singapore Green Finance Centre, and SMU students Anwesha Agarwal and Caleb Low Wei Sheng discussed the two key factors driving demand for data centres (DCs) and why there is a need to balance the ever-increasing demand for DCs with operating them in a sustainable manner.

SMU and Citi Foundation organised an online financial literacy symposium on Friday (Sept 10). Speaking at the event, Minister of State for Manpower Gan Siow Huang pointed to initiatives such as the Citi Foundation-SMU financial literacy programme launched in 2012 for young adults as ways to help further the agenda to make financial knowledge more accessible and build financial resilience. SMU President Professor Lily Kong said, "In view of the pandemic, financial knowledge and skills are now more critical than ever." She added that the programme would take on more initiatives, including those involving digital literacy, to better equip young adults with such information. "Digital transformation, expedited by the pandemic, has presented myriad opportunities, such as digital learning, analytics, and fintech, that will affect and catalyse the future of work," Prof Kong said.

Inflation in Singapore is expected to remain unchanged for the year, with more Singaporeans believing Covid-19 will have a significant impact on inflation rates, according to the latest quarterly survey results of the Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx) published jointly by DBS Bank and SMU. DBS and SMU said tighter public health measures – under phase two and phase three (heightened alert) – and new virus variants may have outweighed the positives of Singapore's vaccine roll-out. The SInDEx survey was led by SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) Aurobindo Ghosh. DBS Group Research is a co-sponsor and research partner, together with SMU's Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics.

At a virtual roundtable meeting with fellow leaders of Commonwealth countries, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stressed the threat of climate change, and explained how Singapore will do its part and support others. He shared that Singapore is establishing the Singapore Green Finance Centre, a collaboration between SMU and Imperial College Business School, to deliver Asia-centric research and training programmes in climate science, financial economics and sustainable investing.

Singaporean households surveyed last month see overall or headline inflation rising to 2.7 per cent in the year ahead from 2.2 per cent in a December poll. The latest quarterly survey for the Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (SInDEx), released by DBS Bank and SMU, polled 500 individuals representing a cross-section of Singaporean households. In a joint statement, DBS and SMU said that some semblance of normalisation and global cues of recovery with the massive roll-out of various vaccines might have buoyed inflation expectations. "A cyclical rise in commodity prices including oil price, the pace of recovery, along with record low interest rates globally have triggered a debate on increased inflation risk among practitioners, academics and policymakers," said SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) and founding principal investigator of the SInDEx project Aurobindo Ghosh.