SGX strikes deal with NTU for sophisticated financial education

Partnership launches NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education as key training centre for capital market professionals.

Singapore Exchange (SGX) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on Tuesday said they are jointly launching the NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education for capital market professionals in Asia. The Centre will feature a state-of-the-art laboratory with trading-enabled terminals and real-time data.

The establishment of the Centre for Financial Education contributes to SGX’s plan to create an environment ideal for sophisticated market participants and investors in Asia. Other SGX efforts toward this include the $250 million Reach initiative announced on 3 June 2010 encompassing the fastest trading engine, a world-class data centre and local connectivity hubs at global financial centres.

The Centre for Financial Education is led by NTU’s Nanyang Business School and SGX Academy, with RTS Realtime Systems (RTS) as the key technology partner. Nanyang Business School was a natural choice, given its strategic location in Asia and its global standing. The top business school in Singapore, Nanyang Business School is the first and only Singapore business school in the top 30 of the Financial Times’ Global MBA 2010 rankings, and is consistently placed among the top 4 in the Asia-Pacific region.

"The NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education will take the development of Singapore as a leading regional financial training and R&D hub to a new level, positioning this as the key training centre for capital market professionals in Asia. The Centre offers a compelling learning, training, strategy test bedding, and research environment where Asian trading professionals and investors can raise their level of trading capabilities and sophistication. We are proud to partner NTU to promote innovation and excellence in the capital markets through this collaboration," said Mr Magnus Bocker, CEO of SGX.

"I am very excited by the synergy that the new NTU-SGX Centre for Financial Education will bring to the capital markets. The Centre integrates the strengths of an outstanding exchange in the Asia-Pacific with NTU’s world-renowned business school. This close partnership will put SGX and NTU at the forefront of innovation in the region’s financial industry by providing capital market professionals with the latest critical skills and opening up new frontiers of understanding and mastery in capital, risk and governance," said Dr Su Guaning, President of NTU.

Professor Low Buen Sin from Nanyang Business School will lead the Centre’s team. Drawing on expertise from academia and industry, the Centre will promote excellence in financial services by facilitating industry-relevant training and thought leadership, according to an SGX report.

Equipped with 80 algorithmic trading-enabled terminals supported by RTS and real-time price feed from SGX, the Centre for Financial Education will run courses for professional traders, financial institutions, NTU students, and the public. Training programmes will cover algorithmic trading and other subjects relevant to the fast-developing markets of the region, as well as topics which meet the Capital Market & Financial Advisory Service licensing examination requirements and the Financial Industry Competency Standards framework.

The Centre for Financial Education will also support the needs of key market participants through corporate governance training for directors of listed companies, and help start-up companies understand how they can grow their business via Singapore’s capital market.

The Centre will offer its inaugural course in algorithmic trading this October.