23 Singapore Finance Firms Pledge AI Training for Over 80,000 Staff by 2028, and What the Courses Cost

Twenty-three financial institutions in Singapore have committed to train their entire workforce in Singapore, totalling over 80,000 employees, in critical AI skills by 2028, and more than half of those staff have already been through the training. The pledge was made on September 24 at the Institute of Banking and Finance's annual Distinction Evening, alongside a new AI Workforce Co-Lab that will study how specific jobs change and test approaches to job redesign. If you work at a bank, insurer or fund manager in Singapore, the practical answer is this. If your employer is one of the pioneer firms and you have not been trained already, it has committed to train you through an IBF-recognised course, and one accredited example is a one-day class on how generative AI works, how to prompt it and how to check its output. If you are a relationship manager at one of the 10 private banking employers, or in operations at one of the participating banks and insurers, your role falls under one of the first three pathways the Co-Lab has launched. For Metaintro readers, the course pages, the funding rules and the regulator's own text show what the class covers, who pays and what the job looks like afterwards. Here is what that paper trail shows.

Who Made the Pledge, and Which Workers Does It Cover?

The pledge comes from 23 pioneer financial institutions across banking, insurance and asset management, unveiled by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, who also chairs the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The group includes DBS, OCBC, UOB, AIA Singapore and Prudential, and its members employ around 40 per cent of the financial services workforce, according to IBF chief executive Carolyn Neo.

The scope is the entire workforce in Singapore of each firm, not a chosen team. The speech said this will give employees across different functions a common foundation for working with AI. The commitment is to train them through IBF-recognised programmes.

Put the pledge against the size of the sector. In a June speech, Deputy Prime Minister Gan put finance at about 14% of GDP, employing around 200,000 people, more than 80% of whom are locals. The same speech showed that the sector added 3,000 net jobs in the previous year.

What Will the Training Actually Teach?

The pledge itself names the goal as a common foundation for working with AI for employees across different functions. To see what that means in a classroom, open one of the courses that carries IBF accreditation.

The AI Literacy for Finance Professionals course at NTUC LearningHub is a one-day, instructor-led workshop of 8 hours that ends in a written assessment. Its outline covers four learning units:

• How generative AI works. The difference between machine learning that predicts outcomes, such as fraud detection, and generative tools that create new content such as emails, plus what the tools cannot do, including confidentiality risks without enterprise versions.
• Prompting. A framework the course calls CRAFT, for context, role, action, format and tone, used to turn vague requests into precise ones.
• Workflow analysis. Deciding whether AI should automate, augment or amplify a task, with red flags for unsuitable work such as highly confidential data or unique ethical judgments.
• Checking the output. A six-step review for hallucinations, bias and bad numbers, and the regulator's FEAT principles, which the course page lists as fairness, explainability, accountability and transparency.

The course page lists who it is for, and the list leans toward operations and client service roles. It names digital transformation executives, account operations analysts, transaction banking operations analysts and client service officers. Its admission requirements include a diploma or degree and proficiency in English, which is worth checking before you enrol.

A second route is fully online. The AI Foundation for Finance Professionals programme is a self-paced course in four modules, covering what generative AI is, why its outputs go wrong, what makes prompts more effective, and governance and responsible use. It is an asynchronous e-learning course, so you work through it at your own pace. NTUC said in June that the course was expected to launch in mid-July.

How Much Do the Courses Cost, and Who Gets Funding?

This is where the funding pages help most. The IBF Standards Training Scheme pays 50% of direct training costs for Singapore Citizens and PRs, and 70% for Singapore Citizens aged 40 years and above, capped at S$3,000 per participant per course. You must be physically based in Singapore and you must pass the course, including its assessments, to qualify.

On the NTUC LearningHub literacy course, that turns into real prices. The full fee is $700.00 before GST, falling to $350.00 for Singapore Citizens aged 39 years and below and all Singapore Permanent Residents, and $210.00 for Singapore Citizens aged 40 years and above. Foreigners and anyone not eligible for subsidies pay the full fee.

A few rules in the fine print catch people out:

• Some non-technical course funding is for finance employees only. Funding for courses in the Critical Core Skills and Future-Enabled Skills categories goes only to locals employed by financial institutions or certified FinTech firms. Self-sponsored people outside the sector can still get technical courses funded.
• One subsidy per course per year. Trainees get the subsidy for a given course once in each calendar year, and only after they complete it.
• Fail or drop out and you may repay. A trainee who quits halfway or fails the assessment is not eligible, and the provider reserves the right to claw back the subsidy.
• GST is not covered. The subsidy applies to the course fee excluding the GST amount.

Self-sponsored learners can use their SkillsFuture Credit to pay the unsubsidised portion of an IBF-recognised course listed on the national training portal. NTUC members get a further layer on the literacy course, which is eligible for the union's training grant of up to 50% funding, capped at $250 a year. Individual and company sponsored places cost the same on this course, but only company sponsored places qualify for Absentee Payroll funding of $4.50 an hour, and the page lists UTAP and SkillsFuture Credit under individual sponsored places only.

A Singapore Citizen aged 40 or over pays $210.00 before GST for this one-day IBF-accredited AI course, against a full fee of $700.00, if they meet the funding conditions.

When Can You Book a Place, and How Do You Enrol?

The literacy course has published dates. At the time of writing, the course page lists upcoming runs on 8 October, 11 November and 22 December 2026 at Haw Par Centre near Dhoby Ghaut MRT, each a weekday session from 9 to 6. The course page lists how many seats are still available on each run.

For a wider menu, IBF keeps a Programme Finder of courses recognised under its funding schemes, which is the first place to look before you pay for anything. The institute has accredited close to 60 programmes to equip finance professionals with critical AI skills, built with training partners and financial institutions.

There is also a specialist strand on safe use. IBF worked with the Association of Banks in Singapore, the NUS Asian Institute of Digital Finance and the Singapore College of Insurance to launch courses on the responsible use of AI, tailored to different job functions and to the regulator's guidelines.

Enrolment itself is simple on the provider side. For self-sponsored learners, the training provider submits the subsidy claim on your behalf, so you do not file it yourself. Attendance on government-funded courses at this provider is taken digitally via the Singpass App, so have it set up before the day.

Which Jobs Change First Under the Co-Lab?

The foundation course is the first half of the plan. The second half is the IBF AI Workforce Co-Lab, which brings employers together to assess how jobs are changing and test approaches to training and job redesign. Its first three pathways cover leadership, wealth management and operations.

Leaders. The leadership pathway is meant to help leaders identify valuable uses of AI, set up sound governance and lead workforce change. Its brief asks leaders to consider which jobs will change, where new opportunities will emerge, and how to prepare employees for them. For a team member, that is the conversation to ask your manager to have with you.

Wealth managers. Here AI is pitched as a way for relationship managers to analyse information faster and therefore spend more time with clients. Under this pathway, 10 private banking employers have committed to upskill their relationship managers, working with providers such as the Wealth Management Institute on courses that combine AI with client engagement and advisory expertise. The example given was a UBS client advisor with over 20 years of wealth management experience who uses AI to prepare for meetings and analyse portfolios, and who remains responsible for the advice she gives.

Operations. Staff in operational roles will need skills in process improvement, exception handling, risk oversight and validating the AI output. The speech set out where that leads. In many cases it means higher responsibilities in an existing role, and in others it may mean moving to a related role or to new work involving AI.

What Does a Redesigned Job Look Like in Practice?

The three job redesign examples offered on the night are the clearest guide to what redesign means. Each one shows a worker moving into new work that involves AI.

• A frontline team lead who now helps oversee a chatbot. At the DBS Customer Service Hub, AI drafts call summaries and suggests follow-up actions for a service team, and its leader, Reno, now also reviews the bank's AI chatbot answers and flags improvements.
• A service officer who moved into building AI. Fahmy joined DBS as a customer service officer 13 years ago and in 2024 became a founding member of its AI Workforce Team, learning AI and UI/UX skills. He now leads a team that develops and deploys AI for customer experience.
• A veteran banker who switched fields. After 37 years at UOB, Jenny Chan used the bank's Better U Pivot programme in 2025 to move from wholesale banking into a retail anti-money laundering role, where she uses generative AI to automate checks.

The common thread is useful for anyone planning a move. Two of them brought their customer experience into the new role, and all three added the skill of working with, checking or building AI tools.

To help employers do this at scale, IBF is launching a Job Redesign Playbook for Financial Services with the Skills and Workforce Development Agency and the Institute for Human Resource Professionals. It is also piloting skills mapping and coaching with Ngee Ann Polytechnic's Centre for Shaping Human-First Transformation.

Will AI Training Protect Finance Jobs in Singapore?

The plan does not promise that. The framing on the night was that some roles will expand, while others will change as AI adoption grows, and in June the same minister said some tasks will be automated, some roles will be redesigned, and new ones will emerge. A Bloomberg report carried by the South China Morning Post described the pledge as part of a national move to cushion white-collar workers from potential job disruption.

What the plan does offer is an aim and a structure. The aim is for AI to translate into better careers for Singaporeans and a more productive workforce, and the structure is a tripartite pact. The upgraded memorandum links IBF, the union cluster for financial and professional services and seven industry associations that represent over 800 financial institutions and FinTech firms, accounting for more than 70% of the sector's workforce.

Unions are named as a safeguard. The National Trades Union Congress, together with the financial sector unions, will play a vital role in safeguarding workers' interests and keeping training pathways open to all, the minister said in June. Career guidance also sits outside your employer, as NTUC and IBF offer career advisory through e2i and IBF Careers Connect.

The pledge covers over 80,000 employees at 23 institutions, and more than half have already been trained.

How Far Along Are the Big Banks Already?

Further than the headline suggests. By June, DBS, OCBC and UOB, the three local banks acting as lighthouse institutions, had trained over 26,000 of their employees in foundational AI skills, close to 80% of their workforce. They had also pledged to redesign jobs where AI has the greatest impact and to support upskilling, reskilling and redeployment.

A separate union target is bigger again. The union and IBF aim to equip up to 100,000 finance professionals with AI skills by 2029, a separate target set in June.

There is a precedent for a sector training push turning into completed courses. Since a sustainable finance jobs map launched in 2024, professionals from over 200 financial institutions have trained in that field, with over 21,000 training completions across nearly 220 IBF-recognised courses recorded to date.

What About Students and Graduates Who Want In?

The plan has a door for new entrants too. IBF's Young Talent Programme for AI in Finance is a pilot open to Year 2 to Year 4 undergraduates from all disciplines at the autonomous universities. It runs through a foundational masterclass, applied project work with industry mentorship and a presentation to participating financial institutions.

Its fine print is honest about outcomes. Selected participants may be offered internships, traineeships or full-time roles, but opportunities depend on students' performance during the programme and the hiring needs of financial institutions. At the time of writing, applications for the pilot have closed. On September 24, the first cohort had just completed its masterclasses, with more places hoped for in future cohorts.

For students who missed it, the more immediate route is volume. Speaking on September 24, IBF chairman Chia Der Jiun said around 1,000 internship and traineeship opportunities from 20 financial institutions would be available across the sector over the following year.

What This Means for Finance Workers, and What Should You Do Next?

Foundational AI training through IBF-recognised programmes is the common baseline, and the Co-Lab pathways go further into the skills for specific roles. More than half of the employees at the pioneer firms have already been trained, so at these firms a basic course is something many colleagues already hold. The skills named for operations staff go further, covering process improvement, exception handling, risk oversight and validating the AI output.

The three job redesign examples were a team lead, a long-serving service officer and a veteran banker. The speech said Reno's past experience with customers is valuable in his expanded role, and that Fahmy's years on the frontline give him a deep understanding of customer and staff needs.

Here is what we would do this quarter:

• Ask your manager where you sit. Find out whether your firm is one of the pioneer institutions, and whether your role falls under leadership, wealth management or operations.
• Take the funded course early. If your employer has not booked you in, check the IBF Programme Finder and look at the literacy course dates. Citizens aged 40 and above get the higher subsidy rate.
• Pass the assessment. A trainee who did not pass the assessment is not eligible for the subsidy.
• Build an exception log. Write down cases where a process breaks and a human has to step in, since exception handling is one of the named operations skills.
• Show it on paper. Put the course and one concrete AI task on your CV, and apply the same approach to showing AI skills on your resume and in interviews.

If you are a student and want in, the sector's internship and traineeship places are the most direct route, and the government hopes to offer more places in future cohorts of the student programme. If you are a Singapore Citizen or PR based in Singapore, you can get a technical IBF course funded as a self-sponsored learner even if you do not work in finance.

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People Also Asked

Q: Which Singapore banks are in the AI training pledge?

A: The 23 pioneer firms include DBS, OCBC, UOB, AIA Singapore and Prudential, spanning banking, insurance and asset management, and more firms are being encouraged to join the Co-Lab.

Q: How much IBF funding can I get for an AI course?

A: The IBF Standards Training Scheme covers 50% for Singapore Citizens and PRs, or 70% for citizens aged 40 years and above, capped at S$3,000 per participant per course, and only if you pass the course.

Q: Will AI replace finance jobs in Singapore?

A: The official line is that some roles will expand, while others will change, and the operations pathway points to more responsibility in existing roles in many cases and moves to related roles or new work involving AI in others.

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