Page 291 - 2019 6th AFIS & ASMMA

» Speaker | Colin Yee Seng Chen
Managing Director & Head, Treasury & Markets –Structured Debt Solutions, DBS Bank Ltd.

Very good morning to all of you, again my congratulations to president
Lee of KHFC on organizing a great event. Really enjoy the city of Busan
so far. I'll take this time to talk about Singapore, a little tiny red dot. And
with a tiny red dot, I'm supposed to take a tiny little bit less time, not Session I
more time. Well, let me just start by giving a little bit of an overview of
Singapore. It is a tiny little island; it's home to 5.6 million people. And
moving into the residential stock, we're talking about a residential stock
of about 245 billion dollars. We have owner occupation of 91 percent. Of
the 91 percent, a large part of it is from public housing. Now with that as
a backdrop, and as you can imagine, the government's key objective is to
Now to end my brief presentation, I think, all in all for the impli- create affordability, given that 91 percent is owner-occupied and a large
cations of all regulatory developments, the jury is still out on what they part of it is, and comes from, in the form of public housing.
will mean for the green covered bond market. For further developments,
it is really important that a pragmatic approach is taken referring to
existing regulation in these, or with a simple signing of the conventions.
But make no mistake, I think that all regulatory developments in Europe
will also have certain spillover consequences to the global level, because
ultimately European investors that want to claim that they are compliant
with the criteria of the taxonomy would also want issuers on a global
level that issue green bonds to show actually that there are comparable
frameworks in place, with the criteria applied under the taxonomy.
All in all, I think a lot will also come down to reporting. I think the
information provisioning will be very important going forward. As
a final comment to make here, I think despite all regulatory hurdles,
second hurdles or any hurdles you may face when you wish to establish a
green bond program, the time to go green is always right. Thank you for
your attention.

» Moderator | You Tay Lee Now if you look at an overview, the residential mortgage market
Wow, you finished earlier than your time. So now please, Colin Chen, is perhaps the most highly regulated market in Singapore. We don't
can you say something about the Singaporean market? You can use see this very much, but if I talk through some of the measures that
whole 20 minutes or less; it's up to you. the government has taken, you will probably realize that it is a critical
aspect, and contributes to social stability as well as the economy. Since

292 2019 6th AFIS & ASMMA Annual Meeting 293