It’s perhaps cliché to claim to be passionate about one’s job, but I think I prove it by spending my Saturday morning reading and analysing the Parliamentary record of then-Chairman of MAS Lee Hsien Loong presenting the bill for the Financial Advisers Act in 2001.

Reading through the hansard, I realised then-MP Ong Kian Min had already identified potential problems which are indeed prevalent in the financial industry now. I am quite surprised at how similar his points were to the reflections I have had over the course of my work, even though it was spoken some ten years ago!

Here are the relevant parts of the Parliamentary hansard:

Sir, if everyone in the industry will be migrated over and covered under the term “financial adviser”, then this generic term “financial adviser” can potentially be extremely confusing to the public. This, I find, is the big weakness of this Bill. ...