The city-state's de facto central bank and regulator has published its plans for reforms to data submission processes.

Singapore is aiming to reduce regulatory burden by automating data submission processes and reducing document duplication, the city-state’s financial regulator announced yesterday.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said in a statement that its efforts would “help financial institutions reduce the resources and preparation time” needed to produce data requested by the regulator. Under the new regime, effective March 31, financial firms can decline any request from the MAS for data they have previously provided in regulatory submissions. The regulator aims to eliminate duplicated data requests by the end of 2019. 

“This is an opportunity for both the MAS and financial institutions to co-create an industry data collection platform that not only benefits MAS as a regulator, but also allows financial institutions to leverage the data collected to improve their operations,” David Hardoon, chief data officer at the MAS, said. He added that the new measures would be implemented “in close partnership” with Singapore’s financial sector “within a reasonable timeframe”. 

The MAS said that come 1 April, all new regulatory returns from financial firms must be in a machine-readable format to “remove the need for manual processes and reduce the risk of human errors”. 

The regulator is also changing its definitions of data requirements, it said. 

The MAS intends to harvest more detailed data on underlying transactions as opposed to aggregate statistics. For example, instead of asking banks to submit separate figures on loans extended to various industries and countries, the watchdog may request each loan is labelled with the industry and country it is associated with.

This method will enable the MAS to “manipulate the datasets internally according to its analytical needs while reducing the reporting burden on financial institutions,” it said.