By SGN | 24 May 2021
It’s been more than a year since COVID-19 upended our lives as we know it. As we learn to thrive in this new normal, we had to explore new ways of connecting with our members and to keep our community updated on developments back in Singapore.
With varying travel restrictions and safety measures across different cities, we decided to launch the first of our Finance Venture Series in a hybrid format – virtually for everyone no matter where you are based, and physical networking events for our members in Melbourne and Shanghai.
To kick-off SGN’s brand-new Finance Venture Series, we were honoured to have on board Mr Piyush Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of DBS Group as our guest speaker and Mr Tan Yong Wah, Chief Information Officer of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority as our host speaker.
During the hour-long dialogue, Mr Piyush Gupta highlighted trends in the post-pandemic world and new industries to look out for, as well as tackled questions from our audiences during the very exciting Q&A segment. While we ran out of time and couldn’t address all the questions that came in, Mr Piyush covered a wide range of topics – from questions on decoupling between China and USA, adoption of cryptocurrency exchanges by banks to what will happen to physical bank branches and ATMs following the digital revolution!
Three post-pandemic trends by Mr Piyush Gupta
- On hyper- digitalization
“The pandemic has resulted in people taking to e-commerce a lot faster. For instance, Edu-tech really took off last year due to the need for home-learning. You can observe this in the healthcare industry as well, with telehealth services taking off. The change in people’s thinking has been quite profound.” - On the nature of work
“With the pandemic, everyone had to learn how to work from home, and this has led to globalization in the workforce – a distributed labour model that is gaining popularity. Today, I can have a team in Silicon Valley, or in any other parts of the world, running projects for us. Remote working – I think that’s the fundamental change.” - On the agenda around sustainability
“The pandemic taught us that tail risk is real, and there is urgency to address such risks. The second thing the pandemic has done is to give us the confidence and knowledge that we can find resources to handle challenges. If you look at the total fiscal resources the government is supporting with to try to come out of the pandemic – look at monetary policy stimulus packages. Now if we can find that amount of resources in a few short months, then why can’t we find the resources needed to handle the sustainability crisis?
And over in Melbourne and Shanghai, our Regional Directors Leanne and Koi hosted SGN’s first ever hybrid event – a physical networking dinner over a live-streamed talk! For many of our members in Melbourne, this event was the first physical event they have attended in a year and many appreciated the opportunity to catch up with friends. While it is business as usual in Shanghai, we are so glad to be able to bring a Singapore connection over, through our speakers, who so generously shared their insights.
Event highlights in Melbourne:
Event highlights in Shanghai:
