Compliance
Compliance Corner: Monetary Authority Of Singapore, Hong Kong SFC

The latest compliance news: regulatory developments, punishments, guidance, permissions, new product and service offerings.
Monetary Authority of Singapore
The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Cyber Security Advisory
Panel (CSAP) wants to raise awareness about the benefits and
risks of generative artificial intelligence. It has also urged
that multi-factor authentication for mobile banking and payments
should be strengthened.
With regard to multi-factor authentication, the panel said
it favoured adopting “passwordless” and “out-of-band”
authentication that operates separately from the mobile device
used for performing mobile banking and payments, the Monetary
Authority of Singapore said in a statement.
On AI, the panel said that financial institutions should manage
risks by raising employee awareness of the safe use of
generative AI and set up comprehensive data handling policies.
Firms should also use AI to be more resilient against
cybersecurity attacks.
MAS, FINMA, FCA, FSA
Separately, the Monetary Authority of Singapore is partnering the
Financial Services Agency of Japan (FSA), the Swiss Financial
Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and the United Kingdom’s
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to advance digital asset pilots
in fixed income, foreign exchange and asset management
products.
The Singaporean regulator has worked with 15 financial institutions to carry out industry pilots on asset tokenization in fixed income, foreign exchange, and asset management products.
Hong Kong SFC
Last week, the Securities
and Futures Commission welcomed initiatives in the policy
address of John Lee, Hong Kong’s chief executive, to enhance Hong
Kong’s competitiveness as an international financial centre.
“We fully support the measures outlined by the chief executive
and his adoption of the recommendations by the Task Force on
Enhancing Stock Market Liquidity to strengthen the
competitiveness of the stock market and promote its sustainable
development,” SFC’s chairman Tim Lui, said. “The SFC will work
closely with the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited to
examine how to implement these recommendations.”
The SFC said it welcomed Lee’s proposals to strengthen Hong
Kong’s offshore renminbi business, deepen financial cooperation
in the Greater Bay Area, establish a new platform to expand fund
distribution and to promote green and sustainable finance in Hong
Kong.