MAS has been working closely with financial institutions, institutes of higher learning, and other government agencies to expand our local talent pipeline and build a strong Singaporean Core. Let me clarify that a Singaporean Core strategy is not a “Singaporeans only” strategy. A “Singaporeans only” approach will be fatal for Singapore as a global financial centre as there are simply not enough locals to meet the fast-expanding specialist needs of financial institutions. Rather, promoting a strong Singaporean Core is about building good skills and capabilities in our local workforce and ensuring fair hiring opportunities. It is about helping to equip them to do well in their jobs and advance in their careers. MAS estimates that more than 3,000 Singapore Citizens held senior roles in the financial sector in 2020, a remarkable increase of more than 80% compared to 2016. The need for a strong local talent pipeline is something that the CEOs of global financial institutions in Singapore fully understand and agree with. A strong Singaporean Core gives ballast to their operations here and resilience in their staff capacity. It provides local and regional networks and a keen sense of customers and markets. Over the years, MAS has put in place several schemes to help develop entry level, professional, specialist and leadership talent for the financial sector. And we can do more. Let me highlight three areas of local talent that MAS is stepping up efforts in: polytechnic graduates; mid-career professionals from other sectors; and overseas Singaporeans working in finance and in technology. First, polytechnic graduates.
Major banks and insurers are accelerating their digital transformation and ramping up hiring in application development, data science, and artificial intelligence. Example: OCBC Bank recently announced that it plans to hire 1,500 technology staff over the next 3 years, with the majority of those positions to be based in Singapore. Bank of America has based one of its two overseas global cyber security centres in Singapore. The bank currently has more than 800 headcounts in Singapore focusing on technology. Another example is Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, which set up its first overseas innovation centre in Singapore. Likewise, global insurers like SCOR have established innovation labs in Singapore. Local insurers have invested heavily in technology too. Singapore has made a name for itself as providing one of the world’s most conducive environments for financial innovation. We are now home to over 50 global and regional innovation labs and more than 1,400 FinTech firms. Last year, we saw record high FinTech investments of $ billion last year, up from $ billion in 2020 [2] . Leading players at the forefront of digital asset innovation have anchored their operations in Singapore. JP Morgan has partnered DBS Bank and Temasek to establish Partior, which is a multi-currency, cross-border settlement platform, leveraging blockchain technology. R3, a global distributed ledger technology provider with roots as a banking consortium, has grown its innovation hub in Singapore to become the regional headquarters for Asia.