Malaysia

FintechFans And PortfolioQuest Team Up For FinTalent Competitions

FintechFans and PortfolioQuest are set to organize two FinTalent Competitions in Malaysia and another location to be soon announced. The events will seek to provide students with a platform to showcase their forecasting, data science and portfolio management sills.

National Singapore FinTalent Competition 2017

Last year’s FinTalent Competition took place as part of the 2017 Singapore Fintech Festival and gathered close to 400 students from local Universities and Polytechnics in the nation-wide competition.

The grand prize winner was Aaron Loke from Nanyang Polytechnic and the top 10 runners-up came from several schools including the National University of Singapore (NUS), Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP), Singapore Polytechnic (SP) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). A wide range of students from different faculties participated in the competition, with the highest number coming from IT, Business and Accounting.

Loke got the opportunity to visit First Data’s Clover offices in Silicon Valley. First Data was one of the sponsors of last year’s FinTalent Competition. The runners-up walked away with US$500 cash.

“The process of learning … was very enriching and engaging,” said Ng Wee Jun from SP who was one of the runners-up. Yap Han Chiang from NUS remarked that the “reference guides and training manuals provided a good introduction to the finance landscape.”

PortfolioQuest provided the FinTalent cloud-based simulation platform on which participants had to manage four types of retail lending portfolios through quizzes and challenge runs during a period of five weeks. The ultimate goal was to make the most profit with the highest cumulative net income across the portfolios.

For this year’s FinTalent Competition, PortfolioQuest is teaming up with FintechFans, a decentralized staffing platform for the fintech industry. More than 1,000 highly educated students are expected to participate in the competition.

The FinTalent Competition joins the numerous initiatives launched in the past years to familiarize students with fintech and nurture the next generation of fintech leaders.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), together with SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), six local universities, and five financial associations, launched the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) Fintech Collective during the 2017 Singapore Fintech Festival.

Initiatives under the collective include research and collaborations in fintech with universities, new courses in fintech specialization, mentorships and hackathons with finance professionals to help students understand fintech trends.

Jacqueline Loh, the deputy managing director of MAS, said:

“As financial institutions and fintechs tap on emerging technologies to create more innovative services, the need for professionals with strong technology skillsets and a good understanding of financial products and processes will grow significantly.”

In parallel, Ong Ye Kung, a board member of MAS and the minister for education, launched the Industry Transformation Map (ITM) in October 2017, which aims to create 3,000 jobs in the financial services sector in the next three years, and an additional 1,000 jobs in the fintech sector each year up to 2020.

“The game has changed,” Ong said. “This ITM paints our vision for Singapore’s financial center and our action plan to achieve it.”