Speaking at an industry event on Tuesday, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong said that the FICS must continue to maintain the high standards of competency expected of every financial services practitioner. In line with this, the Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF) will be enhancing the FICS framework to guide financial sector professionals in upgrading their skills. Among them, streamlining the FICS certification from six to four levels, working with industry veterans to capture their experiences as part of training resources, as well as introducing new foundation programmes for Wealth Management, Corporate Banking and Compliance by the fourth quarter this year. The new programmes will be offered at the Financial Training Institute@SMU, the International Compliance Training Academy, Swiss Asia Banking School and the Wealth Management Institute. Meanwhile, a new Financial IT Academy@SMU will also be set up to train financial services IT practitioners. SMU (SIS) was jointly appointed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and the MAS as the lead provider to offer training programmes for the financial services industry.