Singapore banks need automation to meet MAS 610 requirements

Financial institutions in Singapore must submit additional information under the revised MAS 610 initiative, presenting new regulatory compliance challenges that can be overcome through automation. 

The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced changes to regulatory reporting in March 2018, introducing new data collection requirements for banks - known as the revised MAS 610 requirements. 

MAS 610 applies to all banks in Singapore, including foreign-owned entities. Banks need to submit information at both the individual and group level, as well as report separately for their Singapore operations, overseas bank subsidiaries, and overseas banks. 

The financial regulator issued the XML schema for the revised MAS 610 in December 2019 and updated form templates in January 2020. The revised MAS 610 was available from April 2020 in the new Data Collection Gateway for a 6-month pilot phase, ahead of reporting from 1 January 2021.  

The new version collects more granular data of banks’ assets and liabilities segmented by currency, country, and industry. There are approximately 7,700 unique measures or data points to be reported across 45 different dimensions.  

“Regulators are moving to standardised, machine-readable data models and from aggregate to granular requests. It is no longer enough to simply submit data on time, your data must be explainable and high-quality,” says Regnology's SupTech Product Director, Joanne Horgan. 

More stringent regulatory obligations for the financial sector 

MAS 610 incorporates the core set of reporting requirements for Singapore banks, including both balance sheet and off-balance sheet information such as monthly statements of assets and liabilities, monthly returns on foreign exchange business transactions, and quarterly returns on classified exposures and collateral value of housing loans. 

With these additional regulatory compliance requirements, Singaporean banks face various challenges such as: 

• Keeping up to date with regulatory changes 
• Choosing the right technology solution with appropriate data management capabilities 
• Ensuring a good level of data quality for submissions  
• The lack of automation 
• Financial and time pressures. 

Supporting Singapore banks in automating their regulatory reporting 

Our MAS 610 Reporting Solutions automatically ensure banks are up to date with all data models and rules published for the new Data Collection Gateway. This eliminates the need for complex system upgrades and reduces the cost and impact of future regulatory changes. 

“Working with some of the largest regulators across the world to deliver new data collection platforms, we are at the leading edge of emerging trends in both the channels and data models used for regulatory reporting,” adds Horgan. 

Some of the key benefits that we provide are: 

• Automatic system updates in line with published changes to MAS 610 and 1003 templates and rules 
• Pre-filing validation of your MAS 610 data to guarantee “right first time” submissions 
• Easy integration with existing systems using RESTful API 
• Cost-efficient - all reports and updates are ‘out of the box’ 

Regulatory compliance requirements will only become more stringent over time. Financial institutions must ensure they build robust and scalable reporting infrastructure.