Date: July 23, 2011
Mr Magnus Böcker, CEO Singapore Exchange
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Good morning and a very warm welcome to the Asian Investment Conference and Exhibition 2011.
This is the third year that SIAS is organizing this event, and while I am pleased that many of the exhibitors are back again this year, we also have new ones like DBS joining us this year as our Platinum sponsor.
With rising inflation and a low interest rate environment, many investors are turning to other investment instruments to improve their return and I can say that not everyone is always aware of all the risks they take.
When markets are doing well, many investors don’t think twice about putting their hard earn monies into the investments. But when markets come down, many rush to seek answers to what happened to their investments.
There is a growing need to educate all investors on making informed investment decisions.
We at SIAS have been focusing on Investor Education since 2000. In the last 11 years, we have educated over 70,000 investors in over 500 programmes. This would not have been possible without the assistance of our sponsors and also SGX for their unwavering support.
Today, our education programmes continue to reach thousands of investors through web cast investment talks and videos educating investors on the investment attributes and the associated risk. The online Beginner’s Guide to Investing continues to be well received and today the SIAS website receives over 4.7 million hits per annum.
With the growing importance of ensuring the financial literacy of all Singaporeans, I am pleased to announce that SIAS is today launching the SIAS Chinese website. This website has educational articles, videos, market commentaries and other research reports, giving investors who are more comfortable with information in Mandarin, greater knowledge to make more informed investment decisions.
Now, more then ever, is the time for Singaporeans to be adequately educated and informed on being financially literate. With a longer life expectancy, increasing healthcare costs, and also higher costs of living, Singaporeans need to make their monies work harder for them. Additionally, new measures would require brokers and financial advisors to formally access a retail investor’s knowledge and experience before selling investment products to the customer. The launch of the SIAS Chinese website, is therefore, timely and would enable SIAS to reach out to a segment of investors that had been under served. We look forward to collaborating with SGX and our industry partners to make this initiative a success.
I would like to say a big thank you to all contributors and supporters of SIAS to help make this SIAS Chinese website a reality.
Finally, I wish to thank Mr Magnus Böcker for gracing this even as GOH, DBS Bank for coming forward as Platinum Sponsor, CapitaLand, PIAS, SPDR and Spicei2i as our Gold Sponsors and all other sponsors, exhibitors, endorsers and our guests for supporting this event.
Thank you very much.
