Singapore attracts investment professionals to develop local talent
Singapore aims to attract leading investment professionals from abroad to develop its asset management industry and strengthen the local talent pool. At the same time, the success of this strategy will be assessed not only by the number of jobs created, but also by whether Singaporeans can advance to senior positions, Channel NewsAsia reports.
A shortage of top-level experience
Kher Shen Li, co-head of Asia-Pacific at the Alternative Investment Management Association, compared senior investment professionals, including portfolio managers, to racing drivers, each supported by a much larger team. These teams include analysts, traders, risk management and compliance specialists, as well as employees in operations and technology divisions.
The work of such teams is also supported by fund administrators, prime brokers, lawyers and auditors. Singapore's asset management industry employs nearly 25,000 people, around 80% of whom are local professionals.
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According to industry observers, the problem is not an overall shortage of financial workers, but a lack of top-level specialists with specialized expertise and extensive investment experience. Financial hubs around the world, including New York and London, compete for this limited talent pool. Li noted that making investment decisions requires not only technical skills, but also the ability to act under pressure and assess risks carefully.
Transferring experience to local workers
Lawrence Loh, a professor in the Department of Strategy and Policy at the National University of Singapore Business School, described the country's approach as attracting key professionals and then expanding teams and investment activities around them. According to him, this is not only about individual people, but about developing the entire sector and its talent pipeline.
Khairil Baharudin, a senior specialist at the Institute of Human Resource Professionals, stressed that the experience of working alongside leaders who have gone through several market cycles is difficult to replace with formal training. He described professional mobility, career growth and successor development as important indicators of competency transfer. This may mean greater involvement of Singaporeans in investment decisions, work with more complex portfolios, and moves into regional, global or leadership roles.
