The new centre in Singapore will facilitate the sharing of cyber threat information in a timely manner, and enable a rapid and coordinated response to emerging threats. Second, MAS is reviewing its Technology Risk Management Guidelines. We do this regularly, but this time we are doing it differently. For the first time, MAS is partnering the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) to cocreate the guidelines. We will develop cyber risk management guidance with the industry, for the industry. Third, penetration testing. MAS already requires key financial institutions to conduct penetration testing of their cyber defences by independent third-parties. We need to go further. MAS is partnering ABS to establish guidelines for “red-teaming”, to enhance cyber security testing. Red-teaming is a covert penetration test conducted on a financial institution’s live environment – its people, processes and technology – to assess their ability to respond to infiltration attempts. It will complement other forms of testing and assessments that are already in place. I cannot emphasise enough how mission-critical cyber security is to the FinTech agenda. SOME POTENTIALLY TRANSFORMATIONAL FINTECH INITIATIVES I have described our strategies. Let me now highlight five specific FinTech projects in Singapore that could potentially prove transformative in solving real-world problems. Enhancing Customer On-Boarding: KYC Utility First, solving the “know-your-customer” (KYC) problem. KYC is one of the biggest pain points in the financial industry. It is an obligation in any customer on-boarding. But the process is costly, laborious, duplicative, and still not all that effective in detecting tax evasion or money laundering.
In this context, the Bank of Albania: reduced the policy rate to a historical low of 0.5%, in March 2020, and established the needed operational conditions to supply with sufficient liquidity to banks; provided the necessary regulatory relief and instructed banks to help enterprises and 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  households in difficulties, through the placement of a short-term moratorium on credit instalments as well as in the form of a targeted credit restructuring; temporary forfeited the commissions applied by banks on the use of electronic payment platforms and the fees applied on the interbank transactions costs for the payment systems AIPS and AECH operated by the BoA; last, we suspended the distribution of profit from commercial banks for 2020 to enable the maintaining of capital adequacy of the banking system. The stimulating measures undertaken by the Bank of Albania were coordinated with an augmented fiscal stimulus. Fiscal stimuli were in the form of tax relief and direct transfers to households and enterprises, whose income were affected by the closure of the activity and in the form of sovereign guarantees on loans to enterprises, aimed at minimising the negative effect from income and preserving the liquid position in their balance sheets. The simulating macro-economic policies helped in containing the impact of the pandemic on the real and financial sectors of Albania, and succeeded in safeguarding the macroeconomic stability uncompromised. The economic contraction, fall of employment and the damage in the financial balances of enterprises resulted lower than our initial projections.