What happened
On 24 September 2026, MAS Chairman and DPM Gan Kim Yong and MAS MD Chia Der Jiun announced at the IBF Distinction Evening the launch of the IBF AI Workforce Co-Lab, with 23 pioneer financial institutions committing to train their entire Singapore workforce (80,000+ employees) in critical AI skills by 2028. The speeches also pointed to the MAS-supported industry white paper 'Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime' proposing controls over actions taken by AI systems - directly relevant as agentic AI scales in banking, alongside the pending MAS AI Risk Management Guidelines consultation.
Why it matters
MAS continues to build an all-of-sector AI governance approach for agentic finance - supervisory expectations embedded through guidance plus industry-run safeguards - while pushing workforce competency as a condition for safe AI deployment in finance. Signals the direction of MAS supervisory expectations on AI governance of financial institutions.
Action needed
Singapore financial institutions should align AI-agent deployment with the agentic-finance safeguards white paper and track the final MAS AI Risk Management Guidelines after the current consultation; workforce training on responsible AI now an explicit supervisory expectation.