SMU Vice President (Business Development and External Relations) Associate Professor Annie Koh commented on the need to have a larger core of homegrown financial specialists and leaders in Singapore's financial industry. She said: "Building a Singapore core of specialists in financial services will help Singapore serve as a financial hub for growing Asia. We need a core of specialists who understand structured trade finance, shipping finance, insurance, and understand deeply Asian risks. At the next stage of Singapore's role as a financial hub, we need to take the skills learned from the Western world and customise to Asian needs, and that requires more than hardware building and the likes of MBFC. We also need to look at human capital needs and having universities relook curriculum or enhanced with competency-based training for our local talent. In addition, we need research and development to set up benchmarks and indexes. I believe that with the combination of hardware, software and heartware, we can definitely contribute to Asia's emerging growth and link to other global markets and strengthen Singapore's position in the financial arena."