Singapore sets aside an additional S$180m for AI research; launches two new AI programmes

SINGAPORE will set aside an additional S$180 million on top of the S$500 million committed for artificial intelligence (AI) research, said Deputy Prime Minister, Heng Swee Keat at the Singapore Fintech Festival x Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology 2021.

In an opening speech on Monday, (Nov 8), Heng announced that the S$180 million will be set aside to accelerate fundamental and translational AI research. Fundamental AI research refers to advancing novel new applications for AI while translational AI research refers to application of AI in translating data into insights.

In addition, Heng also announced two new national AI programmes, targeted at the finance industry and government sector, the National AI Programme in Finance and the National AI Programme in Government.

"Key to this programme is active collaboration – across financial institutions and relevant government agencies – to build platforms, solutions, and capabilities that serve the financial sector as a whole," said Ravi Menon, managing director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, in a press statement.

An AI programme supported by the National AI Programme in Finance is NovA!, a platform for financial risk insights generation across the financial industry.

A collaboration between Singapore-based banks and financial technology companies, the initial phase will focus on NovA! helping to assess companies' environmental impact and identify emerging environmental risks for financial institutions.

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"Over the next three decades, an estimated US$100 trillion of climate-aligned funding will be needed to achieve the Paris Agreement targets. NovA! will better enable financial institutions to assess these investments and their associated risks, and check against greenwashing," said Heng.

Other AI programmes announced incude Veritas, an AI governance initiative to help financial institutions utilise AI and data analytics based on the MAS's fairness, ethics, accountability and transparency principles.

Another is Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing Information and Cases (COSMIC), an anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism surveillance programme. COSMIC will be rolled out in 2023 and will allow secure data sharing within the finance industry to share and analyse customers or transactions that cross risk thresholds, helping to identify and disrupt illicit networks and safeguard Singapore's position as a financial hub.

"One of the aims of our National AI Strategy is to increase our productivity and create good jobs. The National AI Programme in Finance will create good jobs for citizens and commercial opportunities for businesses," said Ng Chee Khern, permanent secretary of the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office.

The National AI Programme in Government aims to improve public sector service delivery through various uses of AI. Such as using AI text analytics to analyse and make better sense of the large volume of feedback received by government agencies each year. Another is to refine job-matching on the national jobs portal, MyCareersFuture.

"We are using AI to develop more personalised jobs and skills recommendations. Based on our pilot, this new tool has improved total job placements by 20 per cent," said Heng.

Another initiative launched by Heng is eGIRO, which digitalises the existing manual GIRO application process. GIRO is a direct debit mechanism for bank customers to set up recurring bill payments from their bank accounts. It is a manual process that takes an average of 3 weeks or 6 weeks if clarifications are needed. On average, about 1 million GIRO applications are made per year.

"So participating banks and billing organisations have come together to digitalise the process - to significantly shorten processing times and improve user experience. I encourage more organisations here to be part of eGIRO," said Heng.

The Association of Banks in Singapore said in a separate statement on Monday that eGIRO will be progressively offered by eight major banks and 13 billing organisations in its initial phase. 

These banks are the Bank of China, DBS, POSB, HSBC, ICBC, Maybank, OCBC, Standard Chartered Bank and UOB. 

The 13 billing organisations come from different business segments, including public services, insurance, wealth management and payment services. They include the Central Provident Fund Board and Housing Development Board, GrabPay, Singtel Dash, iFAST Corporation, Singapore E-Business, YouTrip, Etiqa Insurance Singapore, FWD Insurance, Singlife, Bank of China Credit Cards, Diner’s Club and ICBC Credit Cards. 

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Customers from 8 major banks can now set up GIRO payments online within minutes