Singapore’s major financial institutions pledged to train more than 80,000 local employees in AI skills as the country moves to cushion white-collar workers from potential job disruption.

A pioneer batch of 23 banks, insurers and asset managers has committed to train all their Singapore staff by 2028, and more than half of them have already gone through programs recognized by an industry association, according to Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong. The firms will also study how jobs are changing and test approaches to training and job redesign, starting with roles for leaders, wealth managers and operations staff, said Gan, who is also chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

“We want AI to translate into better careers for Singaporeans and a more productive workforce,” Gan said in a speech at a banking and finance dinner on Thursday.

The push in the Southeast Asian financial hub comes as banks increasingly deploy AI in areas ranging from compliance to wealth advisory. While this boosts efficiency, it has also raised concerns that the technology could replace jobs faster than workers can be retrained.

The issue is all the more pertinent in finance, a key sector that accounts for about 14% of Singapore’s economy and employs around 200,000 professionals. The current initiative expands on efforts announced a year ago, when Singapore’s three local banks pledged to train all 35,000 of their employees in the country to prepare for AI.

“Equipping workers with new emerging skills is only part of the equation,” MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun said at the same event. “We also need to support workers as jobs and tasks evolve.”

Their comments come days after Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong joined a group of world leaders in issuing a joint declaration calling for control and international oversight of frontier AI models. The statement warned that capable AI systems have circumvented testing safeguards, exploited vulnerabilities and gained unauthorized access to real world systems.

“We must continue to find practical ways to build common ground and bring more countries along,” Wong wrote in a Facebook post explaining Singapore’s support for the joint statement. “AI holds tremendous promise, but it must always remain under human control and oversight.”

Photograph: The Singapore skyline; Photo credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

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Topics InsurTech Data Driven Artificial Intelligence