Latest news with #Thrive
Business Times
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Times
MAS proposes to improve complex product labelling and disclosures for investors
[SINGAPORE] Investors in Singapore may soon gain clearer disclosures and improved guidance for complex products, following the implementation of proposed amendments by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The central bank released a consultation paper on Tuesday (Jul 1) seeking feedback over the next two months on plans to strengthen product highlights sheet (PHS) requirements and streamline the framework for complex products. A PHS refers to a document provided to investors for certain investment products to outline key features and risks. It complements the main offer document, and helps users better understand key product information. Meanwhile, the complex products framework classifies capital market products as 'complex' or 'non-complex' and requires distributors to assess an investor's knowledge and experience. Investors deemed lacking must complete a learning module or receive mandatory advice. In a statement, MAS said the proposals aim to 'strengthen the effectiveness of a disclosure-based regime for investors to make informed choices on their own, while requiring an appropriate level of intervention for consumers who need more assistance'. They come at a time when investors are increasingly empowered to make self-directed investments, supported by the digitalisation of financial services. However, some investors who are less technologically or financially savvy would still benefit from seeking professional advice to better understand the features and risks of the products they invest in. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 3 pm Thrive Money, career and life hacks to help young adults stay ahead of the curve. Sign Up Sign Up MAS invites views and suggestions from interested parties on the proposals, with comments to be submitted via the FormSG link by Sep 1. After the consultation, it will refine the proposals as needed and issue a separate consultation on the draft amendments. A six-month transition period is planned once the changes take effect. PHS enhancements To improve investor understanding, MAS is proposing revised PHS templates that present key product information more clearly. For instance, essential product features will be highlighted on the first page to draw investors' attention upfront. A new 'question and answer' format will also be introduced to better engage users on important considerations. Complex products will be clearly marked with a 'red' label to prompt investors to seek advice where necessary. Additionally, investment-linked policies (ILPs), which were previously exempt, will now require a PHS under the proposed enhancements. MAS is also seeking to standardise PHS requirements across different investment products. It plans to host mandatory PHS templates on its website instead of setting them out in the Securities and Futures Act's regulations, allowing more flexibility for future updates. It also proposes removing different page limits for PHSes based on the use of diagrams. Under the new format, which incorporates diagrams where appropriate, PHSes for asset-backed securities, structured notes, collective investment schemes (excluding REITs), and ILP sub-funds will be capped at eight pages. Revisions to complex products framework MAS sees 'room to streamline the complex products distribution safeguards' by shifting towards a more disclosure- and information-based approach. The proposals include removing the requirement for mandatory financial advice in most cases, introducing a product knowledge assessment (PKA) and applying targeted safeguards for investors who may need additional protection. These changes follow MAS' periodic review of the complex products framework to ensure it remains fit for purpose amid evolving market conditions and the increasingly diverse investment needs of Singapore's retail investors. . The central bank is looking to remove the requirement for mandatory financial advice even where the investor does not have the qualifications, experience, or knowledge to invest in the product, except in the case of those who require added protection. 'With clearer complex product labelling and investor-friendly PHS disclosures, investors will be in a good position to make considered, informed investment decisions,' said MAS. Investors requiring additional protection, known as selected clients, will still need to go through a mandatory financial advisory process before transacting in complex products. This includes safeguards such as having a trusted individual present during the advisory process and a follow-up call to confirm the investment decision before proceeding. To further support investor understanding, MAS is introducing the PKA as an alternative to assess product-specific knowledge. Unlike the existing customer account review (CAR) and customer knowledge assessment (CKA) which focus on general experience or qualification, the PKA tests an investor's understanding of a product's specific features and risks. Under this approach, a non-selected client, such as a 40-year-old software engineer with no trading experience, would receive a risk warning before proceeding with an investment in a complex product. If the client acknowledges the risks, they may proceed without financial advice. In contrast, a selected client, such as an 80-year-old retiree with limited English proficiency, would be required to undergo a full advisory process with added safeguards before completing the transaction. 'Timely changes' Industry observers have welcomed the proposals, with the Securities Investors Association (Singapore), or SIAS, calling the changes 'timely and necessary given the evolving investment habits of investors'. In particular, SIAS supported the move to introduce a clearer, more reader-friendly PHS, especially for complex investment products. David Gerald, the president of SIAS, noted that the use of a 'red' label to clearly flag a product as 'complex' and the reorganisation of content to present key risks upfront on the first page of the PHS will help investors quickly identify the nature of the product and make more informed decisions. Noting that investors today are increasingly savvy, he pointed out that many conduct their own research, make independent investment decisions, and even trade complex products online, both in Singapore and overseas. 'The new streamlined framework for complex products strikes the right balance — introducing sufficient safeguards to help investors understand the risks, while preserving their autonomy to choose products that suit their investment goals,' he said. However, he cautioned that investors active in overseas markets may not realise they face the same product risks but without the protection of Singapore's regulations or recourse through SIAS if disputes arise.
The National
2 days ago
- Politics
- The National
Somerville made clear we have different priorities from rest of the UK
Shirley-Anne Somerville was excellent for the SNP: calm, measured and clearly stating that Scotland has very different priorities from the rest of the UK. She was clear, concise and to the point. She showed what Scotland could be, and is not ashamed to stand up and say it. Anas Sarwar only has his prepared script about SNP BAD. Once he recited that, he had nothing else to contribute. (The script is dulled through constant repetition by him and Labour politicians). I truly wonder if he has a conscience at all. He supported Starmer's 'reforms', which many Labour ministers clearly misunderstood. PIP and its equivalent in Scotland is to help disabled people to have a normal life, with help with travel costs etc that is needed because of their conditions. And never forget the debt left in Scotland from PFI and its descendants, which has left councils paying huge sums even yet and for many more years. READ MORE: Theatrics of Unionist duo on Question Time were cringeworthy Never forget the Waspi women – lauded until Westminster Labour abandoned them and Dame Jackie went into hiding about them. Never forget the women of Glasgow and their years of fighting with Labour over equal pay, which the SNP had to sort out and pay out. We may think this is old news, but unfortunately the debts incurred have not yet been paid off. Is it the case that it is only with rebellion that we can see a faint shadow of what Labour should be? Radio Scotland on Friday morning could get no-one from Scottish Labour and had to resort to an English Labour peer – Sarwar cannot even own his thinking and explain or humbly admit the U-turn. The BBC are certainly on the side of Reform. The way they promote them while ignoring the LibDems and the Greens, especially in Scotland, is a disgrace. One thing about Reform people is that they can talk, even if what they say is student politics and pie in the sky with no depth of thinking and no real answers to anything, just power-hungry millionaires. Mind you, that might just as well apply to the Labour Party. Winifred McCartney Paisley SUCH a moral victory for those Labour MPs who threatened to scupper the government's planned withdrawal of support for some disabled people. Will they now support the amended bill: a bill that merely delays the cruelty until next year? Apparently, the moral high ground is time-limited! Peter Barjonas Caithness IN response to Alexander Potts and his concerns for 'answers to a great number of questions before independence and not after it' (Jun 20), I can wholeheartedly recommend reading Lesley Riddoch's Thrive, if he hasn't done so, and her inspiring and multi-faceted approach to our constitutional crisis. For in the face of a widening gap between the Scottish people and their Scottish Government, we are heading for a crisis of democracy. Like a lot of independenistas, I also look forward to the day when the UN agrees that we are a colony of England. That day could be a lot closer than might be expected if only the alleged Cabinet Secretary responsible for the constitution would decide to act in the interests of Scotland's citizenry rather than play the lackey to his tartan Sir Humphrey. READ MORE: Labour accused of 'breath-taking hypocrisy' over English oil refinery rescue Whilst I've no problem supporting Alexander's plea for a rerun of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the correspondence in The National Conversation demonstrates there is plenty of will but there appears no clear way of achieving our goal. The UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, however, is a clear route as the Covenant is unambiguous, in Part 1, Article 1: 'All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.' The only minor difficulty is that the Cabinet Secretary of the party of Scotland's independence declines to support the petition to have the covenant adopted into Scots law. Those behind the petition have defeated the argument spouted by the English civil service that adoption of the covenant is an infringement of reserved powers in the Scotland Act and while the petition PE2135, with 6931 signatories, is still under consideration at Holyrood's Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, it needs support. In particular, it needs the support of independenistas in Edinburgh Central and constituents of the said Cabinet Secretary, so that they might have an MSP who better reflects their views on our country's independence. Iain Bruce Nairn I WAS delighted by Roger Mullin's review in the Sunday National of a long overdue biography of my friend Neil MacCormick, whose distinguished career spanned so much in the fields of law, academia, politics and university life (This telling of my old friend's life can best be described as a joyful challenge, Jun 29). About a week before I was privileged to conduct his funeral in a packed Greyfriars Church in Edinburgh, I visited him at home. He was very frail, but the first thing he said was to ask how my two-week-old grandson was doing. That showed the true measure of a great and generous humanity, which undergirded all his public achievements and inspired his political service. Would that today, in a dark world, we would see this quality in public life. Iain Whyte (Rev Dr) North Queensferry
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
St. John's boosting security at parks over safety concerns, says mayor
Park visitors in St. John's this summer might notice additional bodies in uniform, as the city bolsters its security inside popular public green spaces. Bannerman Park will now have a patrol of private security hired by the city. St. John's Mayor Danny Breen said the move to bring in private guards is a response to calls from the community about safety. "After speaking to residents and hearing their concerns … we added additional security there to what we already had in Bowring Park," Breen told CBC Radio's The St. John's Morning Show. "As with other parks in the area … we're keeping an eye on everything and monitoring it to see what further measures may have to be taken." Public safety was recently identified as a top issue in several recent surveys conducted by the city, including a recent feedback forum on the annual Water Street pedestrian mall. Breen didn't say whether the city was considering putting security in other areas, adding it works closely with the RNC. St. John's isn't alone in working to address safety concerns, the mayor said, adding that people might have already noticed increased security inside private businesses. "I think there's just a heightened concern for safety in the city. And I think the city parks and properties are no different than the private ones that you see," said Breen. In April, some members of council, including Breen, said they wanted RNC officers to patrol downtown due to safety concerns. In response, RNC Deputy Chief Colin McNeil said foot patrols would not make the downtown safer and would not be a good use of police resources. Breen said private security will also be present at the pedestrian mall, which is opening this week. "Our staff are monitoring just to make sure that the complement we have is working and sufficient," he said. Angela Crockwell, executive director of the St. John's-based youth support organization Thrive, said she understands the public's concern about crime and the need to make sure people are safe, but worries the presence of guards could have the unintended consequences of targeting vulnerable people. "We know that marginalized and vulnerable populations often can get targeted," said Crockwell. "I would hope that those people who are doing security have appropriate training to make sure that their policies and practices reflect, again, not targeting certain populations." Crockwell wants to see further support and investments in programs that help the vulnerable, like Thrive's outreach program. Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here. Click here to visit our landing page.
Business Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Business Times
Where office lingo came from and why we use them
[SINGAPORE] I've never been one to use much office lingo. Maybe it's the journalism training. Back in school, my professor made us read On Writing Well, in which author William Zinsser rants about jargon before writing: 'Good usage, to me, consists of using good words if they already exist – as they almost always do – to express myself clearly and simply to someone else. You might say it's how I verbalise the interpersonal.' Or as Kevin Malone from The Office put it a little more bluntly: I've never actually watched The Office, but I feel like I've watched the entire series just from YouTube clips. Recently, a colleague who joined us from an ad agency has been catching me off guard with her fluent corporate lingo, which she uses so unironically. This week alone, I learnt: 'sense check' and 'touchpoints'. And just a few days ago, I came across a press release about the National Healthcare Group renaming itself to NHG Health. (Do yourself a favour and skim it if you get the chance – it's a jargon gold mine.) These episodes led me down a rabbit hole: Where did all such corporate lingo come from? A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 3 pm Thrive Money, career and life hacks to help young adults stay ahead of the curve. Sign Up Sign Up 🎖️ Military origins A lot of the jargon we toss around today traces back to the end of World War II. As factories swapped tanks for cars and soldiers returned to the workforce, military lingo followed. Words like 'strategy', 'tactics' and 'logistics' came straight from battlefields into boardrooms. The competitive nature of business made it a natural fit for other sports terms, too. 🧑💼 Borrowed prestige Linguists have observed that we often adopt language from whatever industry is the most glamorous at the time. These words become fashionable and influence mainstream business language. 1960s: The Mad Men era The golden age of advertising brought us phrases like 'hard sell'. Advertising gurus later came up with more: 1980s: Wall Street's heyday Bankers and stockbrokers were seen as high-status figures and became symbols of wealth and power in Western pop culture (e.g. the film Wall Street). 2000s onwards – The tech boom: Tech and IT slowly shed their nerdy image, and everyone wanted to be a start-up founder. 🤷 Why do we use jargon anyway? Jargon acts as a linguistic shortcut, allowing people in the same field to communicate quickly without spelling everything out. It also signals belonging. Knowing when to drop a 'sense check' and 'circle back' can be a sign that you're part of the in-group, and that you know how things work around here – or, crucially, pretend that you know. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can get problematic when jargon is used to exclude people who aren't familiar with the lingo. Or, worse, when it's used to mask uncomfortable truths. Take this inexhaustive list of euphemisms the consulting industry came up with to describe firing people: Cut some capacity, restructure, streamline operations, create operational efficiencies, redundancies, reducing capacity, managed attrition, optimising headcount, rightsizing and resource action. 🤬 Should we use jargon? Proponents of office lingo may argue that using it helps you seem more professional and less crude or direct. While I disagree, I believe there's a difference between being clear and being brash. For example: Instead of 'Let's take this offline' , saying 'Can we deal with this later?' might sound too abrupt. Try 'Let's discuss this after the meeting.' Or say a colleague pitched an idea and you want to ask: 'What's the value-add?' Asking 'What's the point of this?' can seem dismissive of the idea, instead of a more neutral phrase like 'How does this benefit the project?' Jargon isn't evil. Sometimes it really is the quickest way to get a point across. The problem comes when it becomes a shield: to sound clever, avoid hard conversations or to make yourself feel like you belong. The best communicators aren't the ones who memorise the most buzzwords, but the ones who can explain things so clearly that even the most clueless nepo hire can understand. So yes, it's good to learn what 'circle back' or 'low-hanging fruit' means so you don't get left behind in meetings. But you don't have to pepper your emails with them to sound smart. TL;DR
CNBC
25-06-2025
- Automotive
- CNBC
Nvidia CEO says robotics is chipmaker's biggest opportunity after AI
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that, other than artificial intelligence, robotics represents the chipmaker's biggest market for potential growth, and that self-driving cars would be the first major commercial application for the technology. "We have many growth opportunities across our company, with AI and robotics the two largest, representing a multitrillion-dollar growth opportunity," Huang said on Wednesday, at Nvidia's annual shareholders meeting, in response to a question from an attendee. A little over a year ago, Nvidia changed the way it reported its business units to group both its automotive and robotics divisions into the same line item. In May, Nvidia said that the business unit had $567 million in quarterly sales, or about 1% of the company's total revenue. Automotive and robotics was up 72% on an annual basis. Nvidia's sales have been surging over the past three years due to unyielding demand for the company's data center graphics processing units (GPUs), which are used to build and operate sophisticated AI applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Total sales have soared from about $27 billion in its fiscal 2023 to $130.5 billion last year, and analysts are expecting nearly $200 billion in sales this year, according to LSEG. The stock climbed to a record on Wednesday, lifting Nvidia's market cap to $3.75 trillion, putting it just ahead of Microsoft as the most valuable company in the world. While robotics remains relatively small for Nvidia at the moment, Huang said that applications will require the company's data center AI chips to train the software as well as other chips installed in self-driving cars and robots. Huang highlighted Nvidia's Thrive platform of chips, and software for self-driving cars, which Mercedes-Benz is using. He also said that the company recently released AI models for humanoid robots called Cosmos. "We're working towards a day where there will be billions of robots, hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of robotic factories that can be powered by Nvidia technology," Huang said. Nvidia has increasingly been offering more complementary technology alongside its AI chips, including software, a cloud service, and networking chips to tie AI accelerators together. Huang said Nvidia's brand is evolving, and that it's better described as an "AI infrastructure" or "computing platform" provider. "We stopped thinking of ourselves as a chip company long ago," Huang said. At the annual meeting, shareholders approved the company's executive compensation plan and reelected all 13 board members. Outside shareholder proposals to produce a more detailed diversity report and change shareholder meeting procedure did not pass.
