There should be a judicious balance between limiting banks’ activities that are incongruent to their role as an intermediary of financial flows, and allowing them to perform their role in facilitating economic activity and sustaining the recovery. MAS will continue to be actively involved at these discussions to shape the proposals. 11. Our Singapore banks start from relatively strong capital and liquidity positions. They are generally well-capitalised and have in practice maintained capital ratios much higher than our minimum requirements. As such, on a relative basis, we do not expect the proposals to affect them in a significant manner. Nevertheless, the global reforms will set new norms for the banking sector and the Singapore banks would have to take these into consideration in their capital and liquidity plans moving forward. 12. I mentioned last year that MAS will be reviewing the Corporate Governance Regulations and Guidelines for locally-incorporated banks and significant life insurers. We have since issued a public consultation paper setting out proposed enhancements to the Corporate Governance Framework for these financial institutions. The main thrusts of the proposals emphasise the need for directors to have the relevant skills and commitment to  2  BIS Review 103/2010  oversee the operations of the financial institutions, and the important role of independent directors on the Board. MAS will issue our response to the public consultation shortly. 13.
These include most notably a lack of funds for saving, cost, distance from the nearest branch, a lack of education and the absence of the financial infrastructures needed to improve the availability of financial services. It is indeed here where new technologies can contribute decisively to overcoming or lowering these barriers. Technology can reduce many fixed costs, traditionally associated with the development of financial services, while providing for a greater adaptation of supply on the basis of each society’s idiosyncratic characteristics. Unsurprisingly, then, the technological proposals linked to financial inclusion hail from different areas. We can find them in traditional financial institutions, in the new fintech companies, in telecommunications corporations and in the large technology consortiums known as bigtech. As to scope, one of the activities concentrating the bulk of the initiatives is payments. Thus, in the past decade we have seen so-called mobile money – i.e. transactional services offered mainly by mobile operators – become commonplace. Adding to these, more recently digital wallet solutions have emerged with multiple functionalities and specific proposals for international remittances. Aside from the progress in payment solutions, developments on intermediation markets are providing for improvements in the financing of those groups with a greater degree of financial exclusion, such as microenterprises and small agricultural producers. However, these developments are not spontaneous or uniform from one country to another.