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"First thing after Brexit happened, we talked about talent -
talent coming out of the UK," said Sopnendu Mohanty of the
Monetary Authority of Singapore at a panel discussion at
Singapore's first FinTech festival.
"I agree they have a huge pool of talent and it's good to have
something like that so we can take some talent out."
Simon Kirby, Britain's economic secretary to the treasury, told
the audience that London will remain a leading financial center,
though he acknowledged Singapore might be able to lure some of
the talent.
However, he later told Reuters: "I don't think it is already
happening."
He further defended his turf, noting "there are more FinTech
businesses in Ireland and the UK than in the rest of Europe put
together". Kirby promised to "do everything" to make sure access
to European markets remains in place after Brexit occurs.
Kirby would not go into details about how Britain will convince
Europe to agree to that, adding "we are not ruling anything in
or anything out."
Mohanty said Singapore was making its own efforts to develop
talent, building a research center dedicated to FinTech and
retraining people from the financial industry.
People needed to "wake up" to the need to learn new skills,
Mohanty said, as "financial services in 5-10 years time will be
called FinTech."
Some 11,000 participants - including software giant Microsoft
and global banks such as Citibank and Standard Chartered - from
more than 50 countries gathered for the FinTech event.
(Reporting by Marius Zaharia and Saeed Azhar; Editing by Shri
Navaratnam and Richard Borsuk)
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