Daily Briefing: What digital bank account trials mean for Singapore; Inflation remains low in April

And upscale condos hit higher sales.

From Zuu Online Singapore via Yahoo!: The future of banking in Singapore is upon us – and it’s concise, hassle-free, and greener. Earlier in May, four banks began a pilot scheme that would see the opening of bank accounts completely digitalised, using existing citizens’ e-service MyInfo. The government-backed personal data platform has been operative since 2016, but its use in personal banking is the first of its kind as the appraised service broadens. MyInfo aims to streamline the process of personal verification, with users only needing to perform one initial registration with the service to then be automatically authenticated when using government services, filling in forms, and now opening bank accounts.

From CNBC via Yahoo!: Inflation in Singapore remained benign overall in April, data on Tuesday showed, coming in lower-than-expected, but that's largely because housing costs continued to fall. Singapore's consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.4 percent on-year in April, slowing from a 0.7 percent rise in March, coming in below the 0.7 percent expected from a Reuters poll. That was despite the cost of electricity and gas shooting up 18.7 percent in April, compared with a 4.2 percent rise in March, data from Singapore's central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) showed.

From PropertyGuru: Sale of luxury condos and private apartments costing at least $10m increased to 36 units last year. This is up from 21 units in 2015 and 24 units in the preceding year. Sales momentum also continued this year, with 16 transactions for the first four months of 2017. Savills Singapore’s Head of Research Alan Cheong attributes last year’s higher sales to attractive pricing due to price drops, while developers intensified their marketing efforts to dispose all their remaining units within two years of obtaining the project’s Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP) or to sell as many units as they can to reduce the penalty amount.