SINGAPORE – An organisation representing private banks here has hit out at claims in the Financial Times newspaper that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had asked financial institutions to keep quiet about the sources of money flowing into the country.
The Private Banking Industry Group (PBIG) stated on Friday that the MAS “has not issued any directive to banks – tacit or otherwise – to avoid discussing the origins of wealth inflows into Singapore”.
PBIG is co-chaired by MAS and UBS, Asia’s largest private bank. It meets three times a year to discuss matters related to the private banking industry here.
Its members include HSBC, Standard Chartered, JPMorgan and Citigroup, and local players DBS Bank and Bank of Singapore.
FT reported on Friday that MAS issued a tacit directive to banks to avoid discussing the sources of significant sums of money flowing into Singapore over the past year.
The British newspaper cited people with knowledge of PBIG’s Feb 20 meeting who said MAS wants banks to keep public discussion of wealth flows from China into Singapore to a minimum. These sources said that China was not mentioned by name “but it was clear regulators were referring to the country”.
“It was obvious that they (MAS) were referring to China, with all the press about family offices setting up here and mainlanders moving over, though they didn’t single out a particular country,” one executive from an international bank was quoted as saying.
PBIG said on Friday that it had noted at its latest meeting that while public commentary tended to focus on fund flows from China into Singapore, the sources of overall inflows here in fact remain diversified.
“The increased fund flows into Singapore were from high net worth individuals from different markets,” it added.
“The meeting agreed that, in the face of increased fund flows into Singapore, it was important to maintain robust risk management controls to safeguard against money laundering and terrorism financing risks.”
It added that attendees also discussed how to help wealth to be deployed to purposeful causes, given growing interest from family offices in philanthropy.
