The key to any Smart Nation project is information. However, Singaporeans have long suffered from banks' refusal to provide information to their customers in a convenient format.

There is no automated channel by which personal financial management software may pull transaction information from local banks.

The technology is not untested.

For example, the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) standard which many end users rely on is just over 20 years old and is supported by many banks in the United States.

Features like this are already available to corporate banking clients of some local banks.

Without such a feature, the tedium of data entry is added to the relatively straightforward task of analysing personal finances.

Jeremy Chen