Singapore’s efforts to strengthen its fintech talent pipeline are confronting a persistent problem: a shortage of experienced professionals with expertise across both technology and finance, a gap that is becoming more pressing as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in the highly regulated financial services industry.
Lim Chai Leng, general manager at Randstad Singapore, said the market had no shortage of developers or professionals with financial and regulatory expertise, but lacked the “hybrid” or “bilingual” workers able to operate across the two fields.
“As fintech companies become all-in-one platforms, we need talent that can work in technology, finance and regulation, and increasingly, at the intersection of all three,” said Hassan Ahmed, Singapore country director at Coinbase.
The challenge was highlighted again on Monday (Aug 31), when the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the latest tranche of investments under the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) scheme, including measures aimed at supporting talent development and attracting workers to the fintech ecosystem.
A new manpower track will co-fund internship stipends, creating an entry point for younger workers and helping build a longer-term pipeline for the industry. Industry players said such programmes could help address a problem that otherwise risks becoming self-perpetuating: fintech companies need experienced workers, but the sector must first give younger professionals opportunities to acquire that experience.
Holly Fang, president of the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA), said: “Fintech companies often say they need experienced people, but if the industry does not create enough entry points today, we will continue facing the same shortage of experienced fintech professionals five or 10 years from now.”
Fang, who is also chief business officer at treasury management and payments platform Finmo, said younger workers were entering the workforce with relatively high levels of familiarity with AI. Internships could provide them with practical exposure to real business problems, customers and regulated financial environments, experience that fintech companies consider particularly valuable.
Frank Ip, who oversees go-to-market and strategy at AI investment research platform LinqAlpha, said students had often enjoyed greater freedom to experiment with AI tools than employees working in financial institutions, where compliance requirements can restrict their use.
Subsidised internships could allow fintech companies to tap that familiarity at scale, while younger employees could eventually help businesses expand once the necessary frameworks were established, Ip said.
But internships alone cannot resolve the immediate shortage. Most fintech players who spoke to The Business Times said the more pressing gap was among experienced professionals who already understood both finance and technology.
Sng Khai Lin, co-founder and chief strategy officer at alternative asset investment platform Alta Exchange, said such professionals were difficult to find because relatively few people had been able to develop multidisciplinary experience in a sector that remains relatively new.
Experienced workers may also be reluctant to leave the compensation, stability and structure offered by technology giants or larger banks for fintech start-ups, Lim said.
“Most of the good ones aren’t looking; they’re employed, well-paid and have to be persuaded rather than recruited,” Ip said.
Fintech companies therefore see a need for more structured pathways for mid-career professionals moving into the sector from banking, technology and other fields. Such programmes could help workers broaden existing expertise while addressing the industry’s need for multidisciplinary skills.
Another challenge is giving experienced financial-sector professionals meaningful access to AI tools. Ip said many candidates he had interviewed who came from banks had used AI primarily as a faster search engine or chatbot rather than to build tools and applications.
He attributed this partly to restrictions on frontier AI tools at financial institutions, often because of concerns surrounding client data. Without access to realistic environments in which they can experiment safely, he warned, experienced professionals may struggle to develop the practical capabilities needed to drive adoption.
“If institutions can’t let staff use frontier tools on client data, someone has to provide a sandbox where they can (do so) – real tools, realistic data, no compliance exposure,” Ip said.
“Otherwise, the sector keeps running adoption programmes for people who have never been permitted to build.”
Ip said there could be scope to connect the manpower and adoption tracks of the FSTI scheme. While he welcomed the AI Pathfinder track, which supports the scaling and adoption of market-ready AI fintech solutions, he warned that companies could struggle to move beyond pilot projects without in-house talent capable of building and deploying the technology.
Singapore is therefore “getting ahead of a real risk”, Sng said. Equipping a senior employee with AI tools is cheaper than hiring and training a fresh graduate to perform the same work.
But the short-term calculation could create a longer-term problem. If every company makes “that same rational, short-term call”, Sng cautioned, the industry could be left without a new generation of workers who have learned through hands-on experience.
“That experience is exactly what’s hard to replace once today’s experienced people eventually move on.”
