Ravi Menon to step down as MAS managing director, passing baton to MOM perm sec Chia Der Jiun

THE Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Monday (Sep 4) announced that the president of Singapore has appointed Chia Der Jiun as managing director (designate) of MAS from Nov 1 to Dec 31 this year. 

He replaces Ravi Menon, who will retire from the Singapore Public Service and step down as MAS’ managing director, as well as from the MAS board on Dec 31. 

Chia is currently permanent secretary for development at the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), and was one of Menon’s former deputies during his stint at the central bank.

Chia will become MAS’ managing director from Jan 1 next year to May 31, 2026. He will also be appointed a director on the MAS board on Jan 1, 2024. 

An April report from Bloomberg had said Menon was poised to leave MAS this year, and cited Chia as his most likely successor.

A month after the report, which cited its sources as “people familiar with the matter”, MAS in May announced that it had reappointed Menon as managing director for two more years. The reappointment was effective from Jun 1 to May 31, 2025, or until his retirement from the public service, whichever is earlier.

Chia previously spent 18 years at MAS before taking on his current role at MOM. At MAS, he played a leadership role across the authority’s major functions, including monetary policy implementation, reserve management, banking supervision, prudential policy, and macroeconomic surveillance. 

During his first 10 years at the central bank, Chia worked on the development and implementation of policies to restructure the local banking groups and liberalise the banking sector. MAS noted that he was instrumental in setting up the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation. 

During the global financial crisis in 2008, Chia led the conduct of financial stability assessments. 

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In 2011, he was seconded to the International Monetary Fund for two years as executive director for South-east Asia, where he contributed to board discussions and decisions on issues such as capital flow management and financial stability assessments.

Then, in 2013, Chia was appointed assistant managing director for markets and investment at MAS, and subsequently led the review of the asset allocation of the official foreign reserves. 

In 2019, he was appointed deputy managing director for corporate development, and strengthened the operational resilience of the national payment systems during the Covid-19 pandemic. He also spearheaded the effort to transform MAS’ technology architecture and corporate functions, the authority said. 

Prior to his stint at MAS, Chia also served in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Public Service Division, and the then-Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

Chia was appointed second permanent secretary at MOM in 2020 and redesignated permanent secretary for development in 2022. 

The board of directors, management and staff of MAS thanked Menon for his “visionary leadership” as the authority’s managing director since 2011. They noted that he has been the driving force behind MAS’ initiatives to make Singapore’s financial sector “more resilient, innovative, and purposeful”.

MAS said that during the Covid-19 economic crisis, Menon was instrumental in the swift introduction of innovative response measures, including new liquidity backstop facilities, low cost funding for banks to better support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), credit and insurance reliefs for individuals and SMEs, and schemes to accelerate digitalisation and workforce training in the financial sector.