Let me set out the key dimensions of the financial sector jobs and skills agenda that we will cover over the next few months under the Growing Timber series: Job opportunities – what are the new jobs being created and how to access these jobs; Job readiness – how can we prepare our tertiary students so that they are job-ready when they embark on a career in the financial sector; Job retention – keeping our mid-career workers employed through upskilling amid new skills demands; Job redeployment – reskilling mid-career workers in jobs that are being transformed by technology and pivoting them to new careers; Job specialisation – deepening skills and capabilities in highly specialised areas in strong demand; and Job leadership – grooming promising Singaporeans for leadership roles at diﬀerent levels. Today, I will cover the first three dimensions of the jobs and skills agenda – namely, job opportunities, job readiness, and job retention. JOB OPPORTUNITIES  https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2020/gearing-up-for-new-and-evolving-jobs-in-financial-services  4/18  04/12/2020  "Gearing up for New and Evolving Jobs in Financial Services" - Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authorit…  The financial sector provides good job opportunities. Financial services employs a workforce of 170,000. It is the most productive workforce in the economy, accounting for 4.5% of Singapore’s total workforce but 13.3% of our GDP. During 2015-2019, the financial sector created 22,000 net jobs. 70% of these jobs went to Singapore Citizens, in line with the overall proportion of Singaporeans in the financial sector workforce, also at 70%.
They help shape and implement mission critical technology projects, provide technical oversight for technology planning across the business, and set the technical standards to be followed. It requires years of training and experience to attain mastery of these skills. The local supply of talent for such jobs is quite limited and financial institutions will need to rely on expertise from abroad while building a pipeline of locals for these advanced tech roles. Second, intermediate tech jobs, such as application developers, data analysts, UX/UI designers, and cyber security specialists. These are roles which Singaporeans with relevant background can potentially be trained into. MAS started a Technology in Finance Immersion Programme (TFIP) last year through which financial institutions recruited mid-career Singaporeans with STEM backgrounds from other sectors and put them through structured training and attachments in tech areas such as data analytics, cyber security, cloud computing, and full stack development. https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/speeches/2020/gearing-up-for-new-and-evolving-jobs-in-financial-services  8/18  04/12/2020  "Gearing up for New and Evolving Jobs in Financial Services" - Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authorit…  The programme was highly popular. TFIP is in its second run this year with 21 financial institutions oﬀering over 190 trainee places, more than double that of last year. That said, we need to scale up much more because the demand for these roles continues to outstrip our pace of building skills. Third, basic tech jobs, such as tech support executive, IT ops and support. These roles are typically less complex and more rules-based.