100 Problem Statements 2016
100 Problem Statements 2016
100 Problem Statements 2016
1 Digital Documents
EXPENSIVE originals of documents witnessed by a lawyer / notary is required for loan
applications by financial institutions
A platform facilitates digital exchange, signatures and authentication of notary documents.
This platform may also be used for board resolutions, credit facilities, as well as other
forms of contracts.
2 Authentication Methods
INCONVENIENT token – based authentication to unnecessary account risks of weak /
common passwords
A different approach to authentication not reliant on passwords / tokens under the same
authentication infrastructure
3 Common Platform
AML is a process that is common across the financial industry
A solution to leverage a common international platform and infrastructure. This solution
could be made available to industry players through a subscription service.
4 Secure transmission
COMMON paper – based application forms and documents + EXPENSIVE and UN –
SUITABLE electronic solutions + UNIQUE electronic portal governed by financial
institutions
A platform to enable secure authentication and transmission of documents and contracts.
5 Central Platform
TIME – and RESOURCE – intensive KYC processes
A central platform to consolidate information required for the KYC process and validate
this information against local KYC requirements. This platform should also be able to
integrate real – time alerts that would be triggered by specific events.
6 Secure Platform
REPEATED process and SAME information required for KYC AML
A central database for KYC / AML accessible by all financial institutions through a secure
platform highly – encrypted and authenticated. Sharing of customer data should be subject
to user approval. Ideally, this platform should also enable new account creation with
financial institutions.
7 Central Repository
STRUGGLING database update for AML checks
A central repository shared among all market participants. This repository would be a
single source of reference to identify counterparties, company structures, as well as other
publicly available information.
66 Cashless schools
Schools in Singapore require cash payments for different transactions.
A solution that would enable a cashless school system. Information could be used to
monitor students’ expenditure and even dietary habits.
67 Payment For Low – Value Transactions
Small cash-based payments may lead owners to encounter cash management issues,
delayed settlements and even loss id customers. Cash payments is challenging for
regulators to track earnings and calculate taxes.
An alternative payment solution not to result in adding costly infrastructure for the hawker
stall owners
68 Seamless season parking fee payments
The collection of season parking payment is fragmented in Singapore and may create
frustration for car owners. Season parking payments typically come in several forms.
A solution for a more convenient, frictionless way for drivers to pay for their season
parking fees on time and online, without the use of cheque and cash.
69 Enhanced mobile wallet
Technologists expect 2016 to be the year of mobile wallets. However, the offerings among
current wallets are very similar and undifferentiated.
A solution to enhance the value proposition of mobile wallets to create customer stickiness,
promote a mobile centric lifestyle, and give individuals a compelling reason to stay within
the mobile wallet ecosystem
70 automated payments engine
Small companies do not have the capacity to integrate their enterprise resource planning
systems with SWIFT or directly with banks using host-to-host APIs resulting in a lot of
manual operations to manage incoming and outgoing money flows.
A rules-based engine to perform automatic tasks when certain conditions are met. These
rules could either be configured in the online platform or uploaded through APIs.
71 Cross-Platform Payments
Instead of building proprietary online apps, banks could integrate with existing platforms.
A cross platform payment solution to allow to allow users to send money via an integrated
keyboard in any text-based content. As a result banking can be integrated into the daily
conversations of its consumers without the need to redirect to proprietary banking apps.
12 Problem Statements on Portfolio Management
72 automated institutional investments
Manual processing is involved when distributors and financial advisors fax subscription
and redemption orders to registrars of funds / when investors send orders to them.
A B2C2B platform to automate the end-to-end ordering process for fund management and
insurance industry.
73 Predictive FX Rate Model
Asset managers in Asia face timing issues for Asian – currency portfolios as the underlying
indices are based on US/EMEA markets. This causes delays in index production due to
usages of specific FX rates.
A solution to connect the regional exchanges to publish the indices in local Asian
currencies; to build a predictive FX rate model that can be vetted by a central agency.
74 Real-time diagnostics
Potential valuation errors happen when fund managers and insurance companies minimize
valuation errors, calculate and publish NAV princes for their investment products.
A real – time diagnostic tool to detect NAV calculation anomalies across a large number of
portfolios.
75 Interactive customer evaluation
Currently, financial advisors assess their customer’s investment profile based on static
questionnaires.
An interactive customer evaluation tool to enable financial advisors to accurately assess a
customer’s investment profile on an on-going basis.
76 Smart portfolio management
Asset managers need to take into consideration a number of factors when building a
portfolio for their customers.
A portfolio management tool that would deliver a decision making framework and a
calculation engine that builds a portfolio consistent with the objective of all stakeholders.
77 Real – time Investments Advice
Robo – advice is trending as a new way to explore customer needs and deliver financial
advice.
An automated and real-time investment advice engine include: a robust goal-bases
investing and planning framework; algorithm-driven asset allocation and portfolio
rebalancing; real-time product recommendations; timely alerts and recommendations.
78 Data-driven Investment recommendations
Pre-packaged solutions offered by financial institutions may not be easily customized and
thus adapted to customer lifestyles.
A platform that takes into account publicly available information to determine individual
protection needs and suggest a tailored solution.
79 Neutral platform for structured products
The value chain for structured products needs to be more efficient by integrating price-
finding venues, multi-issuer platforms, reference data and corporate action communication
standards, core banking and connectivity services.
An issuer neutral market access for certain structured products to enable: efficient price
discovery and customer suitability checks; straight-through execution and post trade
processes; provision of educational and information documentation to facilitate the decision
making process
80 Investment Management Tool
There is a need to improve access to updated pricing information that allows financial
institutions to calibrate their pricing strategies quickly.
A tool which can be integrated with the investment management platform to: compare
pricing and changes; predict possible surges or dips.
81 Robo-Advisor
Most robo-advisors base their analysis on quantitative data, which can lead to a lag in
performance as opposed to a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data.
A next-gen robo-advisor to leverage AI and natural language processing to provide
effective trading strategies using both qualitative and quantitative data.
82 Straight – through processing
Instead of using central matching apps combined with industry databases, many of small
buy side companies require their brokers to process their trades through manual methods.
These may cause risk of human error, mismatched trades, trade failure and higher servicing
costs.
A product tailored to smaller buy side firms to enable straight through processing through a
central matching application.
83 Research aggregation service
Data for real estate and unlisted equities, which account for a large portion of wealth
management portforlios, may not be available because of formatting issues or limitations
on current optical character recognition technology.
A research aggregation service to cover these classes of assets. This service could leverage
AI and machine learning to provide customized research results and product
recommendations.
84 Automated reporting
The shareholder on-boarding, maintenance and reporting requirements in the asset
management industry is costly and prone to delays and errors.
A solution to automate the recording, transfer, and reporting of shares while reducing the
margin for human error.
7 Problem Statements on Capital Markets
85 Efficient payments settlement
The settlement of payments and trading of assets is a lengthy process.
A solution based on blockchain technology and shared ledger related technologies that will
shorten the time needed to process interbank settlements.
86 Efficient transaction settlement
The settlement of financial securities currently takes two to three days.
A solution to reduce the settlement process from the current 2-3 days to less than a minute
87 Streamlined trade settlements
Communicating the notification to settle Australian short – term money market instruments
in the Australian Securities Exchange system requires the ISIN for the instruments and
creates processing challenges.
A technical solution to enable non-members of Austraclear to easily identify the ISIN code
of the instrument they have traded.
88 Secure distributed platform
The dissemination of interest rates is manual. This slows down decision making and trade
execution processes.
A secure distributed platform to consolidate real-time rates from all banks to transact on
dynamic real – time pricing.
89 Collateral and risk management
The inappropriate use of credit mitigating techniques was at the root of the sub-prime crisis.
As a result, the banking industry is facing more stringent regulations and a higher cost of
capital.
A technical solution to enable non-members of Austraclear to easily identify the ISIN code
of the instrument they have traded.
90 Transparent distribution pricing
Retail investors of unit trusts are subject to distribution charges, which can be as high as
5% of the investment, are not transparent and highly varied even among similar types of
unit trust products.
A solution to improve the transparency and the variability of unit trust distribution costs
while leveraging technology to enhance distribution efficiency.
91 Integrated FX Marketplace
There is limited transparency on the cost of FX between different firms.
A FX marketplace with integrated Central Counterparty clearing that supports T + 1
settlement. Members would take part in FX pricing and would compete on liquidity.
9 Problem Statements on Generals
92 Compliance Testing
FIs find it challenging to leverage cloud infrastructure due to uncertainty on the regulatory
compliance of cloud service operators.
An automated compliance testing solution for cloud service operators.
93 Layered data encryption
Transactions submitted are typically encrypted for network transport and in many cases, for
storage. The data can be decrypted in its entirety by a party with the right keys. This poses
as a potential cyber security risk.
A solution to implement layered encryption so that portions of transaction data could be
decrypted by trusted parties.
94 Safe data sharing
Institutions could derive great insights from overlaying data from different types of data
sources. However, data privacy and security discourage firms from sharing and exchanging
data.
A solution to mask confidential information and attribute a common key so that
information can be aggregated and exchanged without breaching customer confidentiality.
95 Automated training
The world of learning and development is changing in the digital age.
An automated training program to result in the faster onboarding of new joiners, require
less supervision, automate compliance monitoring and respond to global developments in
real-time.
96 Automated translation
FIs produce thousands of reports for their customers automatically, the translation of these
into the customer’s local language is manual, costly, and time consuming.
A semi automated translation solution for financial institutions that enables efficient review
and workflow validation.
97 Unique transaction identification
The process of assigning a unique transaction number agreed by both parties to financial
transactions conducted OTC and bilaterally by non-electronic means is very problematic.
A smart algorithm to independently generate the same transaction number based on key
trade data inputs given by different parties.
98 Tailored training
In the financial services industry, jobs that entail menial and repetitive tasks may be
replaced by robotics in the not too distant future.
A solution to connect with HR data to identify the risky groups, match these with tailored
training solutions and identify new job opportunities.
99 Automated reports
Some operational performance reports are compiled manually through spreadsheets.
A solution to produce these reports automatically while meeting the confidentiality
requirements of a bank.
100 Automated reports
Banking operations usually involve a lot of manual work to create formatted reports from
original files provided by customers.
A technology to automate the creation of reports by categorizing information from original
files and condensing them into the required format.