The industry reflects, looks ahead

By Staff, ZDNet Asia
Friday, March 14, 2008 06:39 PM

Ng Koh Wee, executive vice president of IT, Great Eastern Life Assurance

Ng Koh Wee,
Great Eastern Life Assurance
I can see my fellow CIOs in the industry gearing up for both challenges of a tight budget while having to meet the market demands. We will need to be lean yet prepared to seize the market opportunities as they arise.

Q. Gartner issued a report warning IT heads to prepare a recession budget. What is your view?
Ng: 2008 is filled with quite a bit of uncertainty. In terms of the business environment in Singapore, it is true that we are faced with the uncertain outcome of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage issue and the prospect of a downturn in the U.S. economy. Oil prices have sky-rocketed in the last few months, putting pressure on the cost of doing business.

The cost of doing business in Singapore is also pushed up further by escalating rent. On the other hand, there are new opportunities arising in the local market. With Singapore's Central Provident Fund (CPF) considering a national longevity scheme and the Ministry of Manpower's new policy requiring employers to provide medical insurance for their foreign workers, there could be significant business opportunities for the insurance industry in the year ahead. These opportunities would fuel the annuity and health insurance product markets.

Hence, from the perspective of the financial services industry, it is therefore uncertain if the overall outcome will be positive. But it is clear that the IT budget planning for 2007 will have to be guarded. I can see my fellow CIOs in the industry gearing up for both challenges of a tight budget while having to meet the market demands. We will need to be lean yet prepared to seize the market opportunities as they arise.

2007 was...
... A year that brought initial anxiety, then optimism, and finally closing with the uncertainty of what will come in 2008. We started the year with quite a bit of media hype over rising demands for IT human resource, accompanied by a flurry of resignations of IT staff who claim to get astronomical salary increases in their next job. By the middle of the year, this became overshadowed by the prospect of the booming economy. But this was shortlived as the double whammy of the US sub-prime mortgage issue and rising oil prices started to hit home.

We are now ending the year in a state of a tight labor market while the outlook for the year ahead is uncertain. From my personal perspective, there is also the challenge of maintaining a close oversight on a large-scale project to migrate our legacy policy administration system into a new system. Fortunately, this has progressed well with the prospect of a successful cutover at the end of December.


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