MAS has gotten very good feedback on the growing electronic FX trading system in Singapore. Singapore has attracted key liquidity providers and platforms to base their pricing and matching engines here. We already have about seven banks and non-banks who have moved these activities to Singapore. Now, we have got another two global banks joining us.2 So even during this period, we are seeing positive, encouraging developments on the FX front. Upskilling Industry Workforce Talent development and upskilling the industry workforce is another key area that MAS has been focusing on during this period, so that finance professionals are able to function effectively and have a competitive advantage in the future. During this period of slower growth, MAS has been working with financial institutions to retain their talent, use the opportunity to upskill their human capital, and explore ways to build longerterm capabilities in digital functionalities, so that the industry can emerge stronger from the crisis. Last month, in April, MAS announced a $ million package, basically to support smaller financial institutions and FinTech firms, through the downturn. As part of this package, we launched a training allowance grant, which allows financial institutions, especially the smaller ones and FinTechs, to make use of the downtime to train and deepen the capabilities of their employees. We also set up a new digital acceleration grant. The larger financial institutions are able to invest heavily in digital platforms and digital capabilities. The smaller ones do not have the capacity to do that.
Once people have gotten used to live digitally – remote working, e-commerce, telemedicine – the economy and society are going to change in a variety of ways. The financial sector is well-plugged into digitalisation. Those financial institutions that adopt deeper end-to-end digitalisation, who are able to use digital platforms for their business operations that today are conducted in person or on paper, are going to have a strong competitive advantage. New opportunities in particular areas of financial services are harder to tell. Impact investing may become a stronger growth opportunity. We have already seen some financial institutions launching impact funds to seek higher returns by investing in companies which are focused on combating the pandemic or providing solutions to deal with the associated health risks. Healthcare and supply chain resilience have taken on added importance, and there seems to be interest among asset managers to invest in these areas. Pandemic risk insurance is another area that might see good growth. There is now a much heightened awareness of pandemic risks. Although pandemic risk insurance has been around for some time, it never really took off. I think you are going to find demand for risk management and insurance solutions to address some of these pandemic-related areas of risk. The financial sector is fundamentally in the business of risk management. Covid-19 represents the materialisation of an extreme kind of risk.