The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced a series of measures to bolster cyber security as well as to support the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics among financial institutions (FIs) through a SGD$27mn (USD$19.8mn) grant scheme.
MAS managing director, Ravi Menon recently said the MAS will make a concerted effort to promote AI and data analytics as part of its FinTech agenda.
The aim of the grant, which is part of a SGD$225mn financial sector technology & innovation scheme, is to encourage the integration of AI and data analytics in banks and insurance companies and assist industry professionals to up-skill and adapt to the use of these technologies.
Another area of priority is to strengthen cyber security in order to preserve consumer confidence and trust in technology.
To that end, the MAS announced the launch in Singapore of the Asia Pacific Regional Information & Analysis Centre (FS-IAC), in order to facilitate the sharing of cyber threat information in a timely manner, and enable a rapid and coordinated response to emerging threats.
The FS-IAC is a global intelligence gathering and sharing initiative for the financial sector, with over 7,000 members worldwide.
Additionally, the MAS in concert with the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) will co-develop cyber risk management guidance for the banking industry. It will include guidelines for “red-teaming” – a covert penetration test conducted on an FI’s ‘live’ environment to assess its ability to respond to infiltration attempts.
The MAS also announced plans to leverage technology to improve efficiency in compliance for the financial services sector.
To reach this goal, the MAS intends to transform the way it collects data from FIs for supervisory purposes. This will see manual submissions of data be replaced by machine readable templates, where requested data will flow seamlessly from an FI’s database to the dashboards of MAS officers.
The MAS will work with the industry on a reasonable timeline and implementation plan for the goals it has outlined.
