MAS: ‘Fake Images’ About S’pore Banks Engaging Many Foreigners Unfair & Unhelpful

In the last few weeks, people online have been talking about the same topic again and again.

Reader Bao: Dee Kosh?

Well, yes, but there’s another issue that people have raised up.

Reader Bao: COVID-19?

Come on, it’s September soon and malls are so full that I can’t get a seat in a restaurant, so who’s COVID-19?

We’re talking about the number of foreign talents in the financial sector.

How It Started

It’s really unknown how the whole hoo-ha started, but it seems like the online world, and banks as well, started to talk about this when someone posted an image of the management team in Standard Chartered Bank from LinkedIn, and alleged that “his friend, a Chinese Singaporean who was working at Standard Chartered, claimed that he was the only Chinese employee at meetings.”

For the first time (or so I believed so), Standard Chartered actually “responded” to the allegation—via a press release.

You know shit has hit the fan when a press release, instead of a clarification made on social media, is being used.

In the press release, the bank highlighted that they remain “committed to investing in talent in Singapore”.

While there’s no way to verify if this was indeed a response to the man’s Facebook post, the company emphasised in the press release that they are committed to ensuring a “robust Singapore core pipeline”, and that “70% of its Singapore management team are Singaporeans.”

At the end of the release, the banking company said that it provides equal opportunities to all employees, and that it strongly supports “a culture of diversity and inclusion”.

That, well, appeared to be the start of the conversation that you’d not have expected.

Why, you ask.

Simply because Facebook isn’t just a social media platform; it’s sometimes filled with angry people posting unlimited rants about the Government. Try posting “I support PAP!” in Facebook and I bet all my assets that you’ll go viral for all the wrong reasons.

So complaints have been plentiful on the social media platform and usually, companies or even an entire sector would just ignore all those angry rants.

(Just check out the comments section of this article if you’ve come in from Facebook and you’d get the gist. Many usually don’t read the articles but just the headlines.)

However, that then led to almost all banks releasing their own statement, giving a breakdown of how many percentages of their workforce is local, and their promises of engaging Singaporeans first.

Even MAS stepped in, stressing the need to grow the Singaporean core and also providing figures on the number of Singaporeans in management roles in the entire financial sector.

But with this conversation gaining traction, fake news have also surfaced—the most popular one being this image:

Several Facebook users started to post this image and state without reference that DBS is, well, engaging lots of foreigners.

Which, of course, turns out to be fake, as DBS came out to clarify:

Lest you can’t read:

Clarification – It has come to our attention that there are images, purported to be taken in DBS Singapore, being circulated on various chat groups and social media platforms. We would like to clarify that the images were from our India office and not Singapore.

In fact, the image is still live in the DBS Facebook Page:

These online attacks don’t apply to just the banks: any company related to finance is being targeted. This even triggered the CEO of Temasek Holdings (who’s also PM Lee’s wife) and world’s most active Facebook user, who posted a rather pointed response on Facebook:

Fierce.

In any case, this specific sector now has a special E Pass requirement: while other E Pass holders would need a minimum of $4,500, this sector would soon need a minimum salary of $5,000.

And MAS has also spoken up again, this time not about the number of Singaporeans working in the financial sector but about the consequences of spreading “fake news”.

“Unhelpful”

In a Straits Times premium report, MAS responded to the “fake images.”

Reader Bao: OMG are they going to POFMA liao?

Well, not really, because it’s going to a tad to justify a POFMA here. You might want to read up more about POFMA here before you make that statement if not you might be POFMA-ed.

MAS said, “We hear the views and concerns of Singaporeans who have spoken up on the issue of local representation in the financial sector.

“But the propagation of falsehoods by some individuals is unhelpful for an informed discussion on these issues; not to mention, unfair to the financial institutions concerned as well as to the foreigners who work here and contribute to Singapore.”

No wonder Ho Ching is angry.

In the meantime, MAS is still working on “efforts to ensure more diversity in firms and functions, and equal opportunity for Singaporeans.”

“As an international financial centre with global and regional functions, we will necessarily have an international character to the workforce…But there are areas we can do better – some functions and some firms where there is scope to increase the proportion of Singaporeans.”

Lest you’re not aware, Singapore isn’t just a bubble tea hub; it’s also a regional and international financial hub, and is the world’s fourth-best financial hub in the world.

Being a financial hub means more jobs are available for Singapore, since we even have financial institutions setting up HQ here in Singapore even when they don’t operate in our tiny island.