Grooming Asia's finance leaders

SINGAPORE has been progressively upgrading finance skills, and that trend looks set to continue as the country presses ahead with ambitions to be Asia's leading financial hub. In 2014, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who is also chairman of the country's central bank and the International Monetary Fund's International Monetary and Financial Committee, spoke of the need to develop leaders for Singapore's financial sector. As Mr Tharman pointed out, deeper skills and expertise will be required as the financial sector grows.

Indeed, Singapore has come a long way over the past 50 years - it did not start out as a financial centre. Initially, the banking sector comprised foreign bank branches and small local banks. The skills required at that time were basic. But today, Singapore's financial sector - comprising some 1,000 financial institutions - accounts for nearly 12 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP). Financial sector and leadership skills, particularly within an Asian context, are now key priorities for the industry and policymakers.

This will require the commitment and efforts of several sections of society. For instance, academics will certainly have their part to play in developing, inspiring and nurturing leaders with the right skills, values, confidence and attitude. However, it is also important to provide Asia's next generation of finance leaders with not just state-of-the-art classroom learning, knowledge, cases and theories, but also experiential learning and mentoring from leading senior executives and policymakers who have been there, done that.