Singapore’s finance employees praise government’s affirmative action plan

Support tighter restrictions on foreign finance workers.

An overwhelming majority of financial services workers support Singapore’s “Fair Consideration Framework” that mandates the hiring of Singaporean citizens ahead of foreigners in certain job categories such as finance.

A new eFinancialCareers survey said 75% of respondents were in favor of the plan, with most expecting more Singaporeans to be hired as a result. Despite this, survey participants (who were almost even split between locals and foreigners) said they did not expect any negative impact on Singapore’s reputation as a global financial center.

More than half of respondents said their employers had overlooked local professionals in favor of overseas professionals, and now expect the new requirement to go a long way to remedying this situation.

The new government policy, announced in September by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), will make it mandatory for firms with more than 25 employees to advertise all jobs paying less than SG$12,000 per month on a MOM-sponsored jobs’ bank for 14 calendar days.

In addition, no company can apply for an employment pass until it has advertised the role on the jobs’ bank. The new requirements will become mandatory beginning August 2014.

About a quarter of respondents said the Fair Consideration Framework could reduce investment by foreign financial firms. Half the respondents said there would be no impact on foreign investment or wages paid to staff.

eFinancialCareers conducted the research among 956 Singapore-based financial services professionals at the end of October.