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Tue, Dec 01, 2020 – 4:49 pm
UPDATED Tuesday, December 1, 2020 – 8:13 pm
This story first appeared on October 25, 2019 and has been updated.
SINGAPORE expects to announce the details of a single platform for consumers to aggregate their financial information from multiple accounts at major banks soon.
Such a platform, first reported by The Business Times In February 2019, it will allow consumers to consent to share their consolidated financial data with traditional financial institutions, as well as with certain government agencies.
Over time, it could also make it easier for consumers to compare products and services for better financial planning and, if they so choose, easily switch between competing offerings.
This liberalization, a concept called “Open Banking” in Europe, comes amid a recognition that Singaporean consumers need a consolidated and seamless view of their assets and liabilities in order to plan for their down years. (Singaporeans now have the longest life expectancy in the world at 84.8 years.)
The banking industry and regulators are considering the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), codes that allow computer applications to communicate with each other, to divide and divide data that can be shared with consumers because this data belongs to them. , but to keep them separate. data that cannot be shared on the platform because some of it is owned by banks, said Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in an interview.
This move will be the third pillar of Singapore’s recent move to liberalize its financial sector on the digital front. The other two pillars are issuing digital banking licenses and giving fintechs access to the real-time payment system, which is the backbone of Singapore’s payments infrastructure.
On Monday, MAS said that eligible non-bank financial institutions, starting in February 2021, will have direct access to the banking system’s real-time retail payments infrastructure. This will give non-bank players, the main payment institutions under the Payment Services Act, access to payment methods so that they can offer PayNow services.
“Taking all three together, the challenge for banks is not trivial,” Menon said, adding that there are “deep-seated convictions” that customers will benefit from better service and that banks will emerge stronger from the competition.
The MAS has rounded up all digital banking license applications. It will grant up to two licenses for a full digital bank (which will have access to cheap retail deposits) and up to three licenses for a digital wholesale bank.
The MAS has also said that Singaporean banks, which have collectively grabbed more than half of the market share here, must remain strong local anchors amid competition. With his weight and experience, established banks are already preparing to respond in kind, Menon said.
“Our banks will not stand still. We will see very interesting competition.”
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