The managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, has said that protecting and growing Singaporean jobs, especially in current economic conditions, is a «top priority.»
«MAS has been working with FIs to develop a strong local leadership pipeline, and the industry is making progress,» Ravi Menon said on Tuesday in response to retired senior banker Raymond Koh, who wrote to national daily «The Straits Times,» saying that workforce composition in banks needs to be examined.
«Singaporeans are well represented across business functions, but we need to improve the local proportion in areas like technology and risk management,» Menon said, noting that Singapore citizens account for 43 percent of the workforce in the financial sector.
With Singaporeans told to expect more job losses, retrenchment and hiring freezes amid a worsening economic outlook, many are calling for employers to give them a fair chance by actively seeking, interviewing and fairly evaluating local candidates. «It has been common market knowledge that certain big, long-established foreign banks have been sidelining Singaporean talent in favor of foreign hires,» Koh said in the letter.
Financial Firms on Watchlist
Earlier this month, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) placed 47 firms – 30 of which are in the Financial Services and Professional Services sectors – on the Fair Consideration Framework Watchlist for suspected discriminatory hiring practices.
MOM said that in one wealth management firm, almost three-quarters of their PMETs are from the same nationality. In another example of a bank, almost two-thirds of the PMETs are of the same nationality.
«We will subject their hiring to closer scrutiny to ensure that there is no nationality bias against locals, which is unacceptable and not in line with fair, merit-based hiring,» MOM said in the statement.
