Having just marked International Women’s Day, how do you think women’s experiences within the finance industry have changed? How is the workplace advancing to support women’s specific needs?
Women in the financial industry in Singapore have always held a significant role. According to a Deloitte study in 2021, women in the Singapore financial industry held 20.8% of C-suite roles and 24.5% of senior leadership roles, outperforming the Asia average, and 44.9% of managerial roles below senior leadership. The proportion of women on boards of Singapore’s top 100-listed companies has grown to 22.7% as of June 2023, up from 15.2% at the end of 2018 according to the Council for Board Diversity in Singapore.
Read more: The TRADE launches Diversity & Inclusion Survey for 2024
Among our efforts as an exchange to promote diversity, we mandated listed companies to set a board diversity policy back in 2021. I believe the pandemic also played a role in getting organisations technically ready for flexible work practices. While progress has been made in advancing gender diversity, there is still some way to go in changing mindsets and encouraging a workplace culture that is truly inclusive. As a member of the executive committee of the Financial Women’s Association of Singapore, I am optimistic that with increased awareness, we will certainly move in the right direction!
In your work in equities and derivatives across Singapore, ASEAN, Middle East, India, and Australia where has the majority of the market’s attention been focused over the last six months?
Last year was marked by volatility and geopolitical risks and looks to continue into 2024. It ended with most Asian equity markets in positive territory despite tight monetary policy conditions and 2024 started with even higher volatility – for example, 30-day volatility in January was 17% (up 3 percentage points month-on-month) for FTSE China A50 index, 14% (up 4 percentage points) for Nifty50 index, with the Nifty50 index hitting an all-time high at 22,097 on 15 January 2024.
Our international customers continue to turn to our multi-asset offering in a persistently challenging macro environment. As a result, derivatives traded volumes on SGX have risen to record levels, with strong increases across equities, FX and commodities. Notably, we saw deep trading liquidity through the extended Lunar New Year holidays in Asia in February, as our markets remained open even though local markets were closed. Our SGX FTSE China A50 Index Futures, which is the most liquid international futures for Chinese equities, reached a new high in February with daily average volume of about 535,000 lots, the highest since August 2020.
An interesting one was the activity in SGX FTSE Taiwan Index futures on the back of TSMC – the largest component stock of the index – earnings release and positive news flow from the global technology sector through February. As global funds continue to be drawn to India, GIFT Nifty Futures saw significant activity as well as new record day volume (US$5.5B) and open interest (US$4.85B) in our SGX INR/USD Futures in February.
What are the key areas of divergence between the regions?
There has been much discussion on this year’s global economic outlook, particularly around the interest rate environment. Rising geopolitical tensions and divergence in economic performance remain top of mind. With Asia contributing about two-thirds of global growth, investors around the world have also been looking for alpha opportunities in this region.
Market participants typically look at global markets based on their risk profile, investment objective and market familiarity. These shape their trading strategies, such as long/short equity, macro multi-strategy, tactical event-driven, etc. We have seen the investing and trading communities express their strategies on SGX as an effective and efficient venue to access close to 100% of Asia GDP across asset classes.
In the Asia-Pacific region, SGX’s products find a natural familiarity amongst investors by virtue of proximity and extensive economic and social ties. We have always had a ready audience in these regions for productive discussions. We are also having more of such conversations with diverse investors in the US and Europe, on the back of increasing volumes and liquidity in non-Asian time zones.
How can international institutions best navigate Asia’s idiosyncratic risks?
Asia is a very diverse and multi-faceted region, each country with its own development pace and unique market characteristics. SGX started as the first international derivatives exchange in Asia, with our roots in predecessor organisation SIMEX which goes back 40 years. We have been simplifying Asia for decades, with the aim to provide international investors with a highly liquid, single-point access to Asia, round the clock.
Having pioneered many products over time, we have fostered an enduring trust among customers that SGX operates with international best practices. It is our mission to be that central beacon for anyone seeking to participate in Asian multi-asset markets in equities, currency and commodities – bridging global investors to Asia and vice versa.