Singapore, 17 May 2018... The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued revised regulatory requirements which set out the revised reporting standards for banks in Singapore. These changes will take effect on 1 October 2020. This is in line with MAS’ objectives to collect data in machine-readable format and to reduce duplicate data submissions by financial institutions (FIs). 

2     The key changes to the regulatory requirements include:

(i) collecting more granular data of banks’ assets and liabilities by currency, country and industry. Greater granularity allows better identification of potential risks to the banking system;

(ii) rationalising the collection of data on RMB business activities and deposit rates.  The standardised requirements will provide greater consistency and reusability of the data; and

(iii) removing the Domestic Banking Unit and Asian Currency Unit¹ and for banks to report their regulatory returns in Singapore dollar and foreign currency instead.

3     MAS had earlier provided banks with the finalised template for their data submissions on 29 March 2018. This will provide banks with 24 months to make the necessary changes to their systems and processes in order to meet the new requirements. Banks can continue to use the existing reporting forms for data submission prior to 1 October 2020.

4     Responding to feedback from the public consultation, MAS has also formed an industry working group to review whether transactional data provided to the OTC trade repository can be used as an alternative source for data collected in the revised regulatory requirements.  If possible, this will further rationalise data collection for OTC data reporting, improving efficiency and reducing costs for banks.

5     Dr David Hardoon, Chief Data Officer, MAS, said, “This is a significant step towards achieving MAS’ objective of zero duplication of our data requests to financial institutions. The revised regulatory requirements will help to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data submissions for MAS and the industry.  We also welcome proposals and opportunities to collaborate with the industry to further improve our data collection.”

6     MAS’ response to the second public consultation² can be found here.

¹ See MAS’ responses to feedback received on “Removing the DBU-ACU Divide – Implementation Issues”  at /-/media/mas/news-and-publications/consultation-papers/response-to-feedback-received-on-removing-the-dbu-acu-divide--implementation-issues.pdf (830.9 KB)

² MAS conducted two public consultations with the industry on the “Proposed Revisions to MAS Notice to Banks 610 and MAS Notice to Merchant Banks 1003 – Submission of Statistics and Returns”. Please see the First Consultation and Second Consultation on MAS website.