MAS to push banks, insurers for more data labs

Singapore

THE Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will work with several other banks and insurers on plans to establish and expand their data analytics and innovation teams in Singapore, said its managing director Ravi Menon on Thursday.

Speaking at the Sibos 2015 conference, he also highlighted that banks need to find a way to reduce the overall cost of data management, make payments more convenient and improve the way payments are processed at points of sale (POS).

"It is MAS's conviction that innovation and technology will be critical to the future growth and success of Singapore's financial sector," he told participants at the conference's closing session.

Mr Menon noted that insurers such as Aon and MetLife as well as banks such as Citibank, Credit Suisse, DBS, HSBC and UBS have already set up innovation labs in Singapore.

Electronic payments should evolve to the point that they are as easy as writing a cheque or handing over some cash, he said.

"Few of us can readily recall our own bank account numbers, let alone be familiar with those of our friends and family," he said.

Banks are looking to improve their payments processing through the real-time processing system Fast (Fast and Secure Transfers) by cutting out the use of bank account numbers, and using mobile numbers as identifiers instead, he said.

The Association of Banks in Singapore is also looking to standardise the POS applications, with MAS hoping to have a "unified POS", with a single terminal, preferably mobile, that can read all kinds of cards.

"This will allow merchants to enhance efficiency by simplifying front-to-back process integration and enhance the shopping or dining experience of customers," he said.

Banks should also look to reducing the cost of data management.

"While technology has significantly reduced the unit costs of data gathering, it has ironically also raised the potential total cost of data by opening more possibilities for data mining and analysis," said Mr Menon.

Banks can look to apply an application program interface (API) - a piece of technology that involves a set of protocols to determine how software component should interact. APIs would allow users to merge multiple data sets from different sources into a single rich data set, he said.

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