The Singapore Press Club partnered with Citi Singapore to introduce a Lunch-and Learn session for media in Singapore with the inaugural session held on 3 August 2022.
With the aim to improve the depth and accuracy of financial reporting in Singapore, this session, held at Citi's conference room at Asia Square, focused on emerging trends in financial services. The two-hour session was held from 12pm to 2pm with a simple lunch served prior to the presentation and Q&A session.
This first session on Digital Payments in the next Frontier was conducted by Deven Somaya, Interim Singapore and ASEAN Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) and Feng Meng Wei, Director, Cash Product Head for TTS, Singapore.
During the two-hour session which was attended by close to 15 media across different publications, Deven and Meng Wei gave attendees an overview of the evolution of payments, threw light on the complex payments ecosystem and expounded on the global payments infrastructure and how it supports the new economy. The session also touched on the partnership between banks and FinTechs in this space, how purchases may occur in the metaverse and why central bank digital currencies are the next big thing in the next 3-5 years.
Deven said, “The world of payments has been evolving very rapidly. As a core part of our transaction banking offering at Citi, it was a wonderful opportunity to spend a couple of hours to talk to our media partners on this topic. I was buoyed by how interactive and lively the discussions turned out to be!”
Encouraged by the positive feedback received from the attending media, Adam Rahman, ASEAN and Singapore Head of Corporate Affair said, “Sharing our expertise with the media reinforces our leadership as well as builds positive relationships for the long term. Thanks to Deven and Meng Wei for making time. I look forward to sharing other areas of our business in the coming months.”
Janet Wee-Ng, General Manager of the Singapore Press Club, said, “We are encouraged by the sign ups for this pilot Lunch-and-Learn session and feedback from attendees that they enjoyed the opportunity to interact with the industry experts for useful take-away information that they could reference for future reporting. We'll be happy to organise more of such sessions in the future with the support of corporations like Citi Singapore".
A post event survey showed that attendees who are mainly reporting in the finance, business and tech segments are keen on such future Lunch-and-Learn sessions to cover topics about Consumer Finance, Business Finance, Fintech and Sustainability.
We welcome our Singapore Press Club members and journalists in Singapore interested to participate in future Lunch-and-Learn sessions to contact our Club's secretariat at email: secretariat@pressclub.org.sg to register your interest.