My Professional Goals

I accompanied my wife to the Speakers' Corner on Saturday. She was covering the Lehman-linked products saga, and Tan Kin Lian was making a speech.

I agree with his point that these products should not have been sold to the public. They are high risk products. There are two aspects to risk, as I have learned from "fooled by randomness" - First is the likelihood of it happening, second is the impact should it happen. While it was unlikely that the reference entities go bust, the impact should that happen is that investors will lose all of their money. It is sort of like asking unsophisticated public to buy cat bonds, to be an insurer. Such a product should only be sold to sophisticated investors as part of their diversification strategy and not to old folks who put their life savings into it. Whose fault is it?

1) MAS - for the regulatory oversight. It is unreasonable to expect the public to fully understand complex financial products. As Tan Kin Lian said, the financial industry should follow the health industry, MAS should take the responsibility to check the products to ensure they are suitable for consumers. However, as part of the Spore govt and seeing their usual attitude, I dont think the MAS will acknowledge its mistake. The public's trust in MAS to resolve the issue is also low because the financial institutions involved include one owned by the Singapore government.

2) Financial institutions - They should not be selling these products to the public in the first place. Many financial institutions do corporate philanthropy and employee volunteerism to show their 'responsible corporate citizenship'. Yet, like many businesses in Singapore, they dont realize that CSR is something more basic than that. It is about looking at the environmental and social impact of your operations. In this case, not selling risky products to the public, and instituting systems and processes to ensuring that sales staff are selling the products correctly. Corporate philanthropy/employee volunteerism is just an easy way out, or paying for a license to operate

Through this whole episode, I also learnt that for social activism to really work, people who have the ability and the clout need to stand up. In this case, it is Tan Kin Lian. Any Tom, Dick or Harry wont be able to do much. Tan Kin Lian has the knowledge, the connections and the ability to do things. I respect him for standing up to do address the issue, to help those he think are unfairly treated. I respect him as a do-er. There are people who make lots of noise but who dont do anything constructive.

I hope one day to become someone like that, to be able to use my skills and professional expertise to help those in need, rather than to prostitute my mind! I also hope to be a do-er, not someone who only talks theory and writes a million proposals but ends up not executing anything.

I think these aims will help me chart my professional career.