Month: May 2019

A shortened week due to a public holiday on Monday. Then it was off to Yangon for my monthly financial consultancy work from Tue to Fri. This was one of my longest trip for a while, having to spend 3 nights there. The agenda was packed with meetings and discussions with deadlines to work towards.

We had hired a Treasury manager who finally started in Apr. It was timely as there was a lot of work we needed to do, to line up the funding pipeline, track and complete the drawdowns of much-needed financing for our marketing teams to lend to the end clients as demand outstripped existing funds and capital.

It was good to know that much work has been done in the last 17 months and our loan portfolio has grown by a factor of 3 times. We have a more robust infrastructure for future growth, yet we are already starting to prepare for a digitalization road map and strategy to enable us to move to the next stage of growth.

It is so exciting when you see an energized senior management team leading a fast-growing company. We can literally see the fruits of our labour and feel the warmth of appreciative customers. To be able to help farmers get out of their poverty and living from hand to mouth existence is a reward unto itself.

We had 3 nice dinners of mainly western and Italian food with wines on this trip. The last night was especially memorable as our colleague brought us to the largest fruits and vegetables market in the evening. This market is open 24 x 7. Given that the country had closed itself from the world for 50+ years, the place was stuck in a time warp. While we can see progress as all shops were piled high with stock, the whole market seems unchanged and reminded me of photos of Singapore from the 1950s.

Things are brighter now since the country opened up about 5 years ago. People are eating better now and everyone seems to have a smartphone in their hands. The middle class is rising fast. Now that they have seen what the outside world can offer, everyone is hungry for more.

As my fellow consultant and I crossed into our second half, the rewards are less about financial. It is more about the satisfaction of seeing the company grow and that we can use our past experience to value add to the economy.

More FDI (Foreign Direct Investments) are starting to pour into the country again. The government is more aware of the bottlenecks preventing businesses from growing faster and becoming more proactive now. Infrastructure investments are also timely as the city cannot handle the modern load capacity and traffic jams are a given everywhere in the city.

The future is bright but I wish that the central government is able to capture the opportunities more aggressively as they have slowed developments for the last few years after opening up. I believe that its citizens are now ready to embrace the future.

I have been on a life long learning journey since going on gardening leave from my last banking job in Jun 2017. Since then, with the timely arrival of the Skillsfuture initiative to retrain mid-career PMETs, I have embarked on a path of self-discovery to plot my halftime road map.

I had written about the journey taken so far in my previous blog post so this week’s personal ramblings will be on the future, the next step. As I move deeper into new learnings that interest me and also to help me set a course to help pivot from my past experiences into a new niche, I cannot help but realise that this happens to be the future road map for all industries too. Getting ahead of the curve is very important.

As a global finance centre, Singapore has been very welcoming to overseas talent to build up its reputation as a premium banking location. The downside is that many citizens are displaced and replaced by foreign talent as this is an attractive place to be. It is at the heart of Asia where it is fast growing. With the advent of AI, more jobs will be lost to technology. We need to retrain and upskill to prepare for newer jobs that will appear in the near future.

The government has realised this and had started the Skillsfuture initiative to address it. I fully embrace this as it provides me with a lot of opportunities to upgrade myself. I need to be hungry enough to seek out my path, using the tools that have been provided. The website myskillsfuture.sg  https://www.myskillsfuture.sg/ already has more than 25,000+ courses where one can use keywords search to find a topic that you may be interested in.

What’s next? I am half way through my MOOC online course on AI in Finance. Thanks to a friend, he showed me the path to the next step. He was in the mailing list of IBF (Institue of Banking and Finance) and receives regular updates on developments in the banking sector and possible job opportunities. This was part of the benefits from the retrenchment exercise which he was unfortunately placed into about 2 years ago.

He forwarded an email from IBF to me a few weeks ago that prick my interest immensely. They have started a new Profession Conversion Program (PCP) along the lines of which I have been pursuing. https://conversion.mycareersfuture.sg/Portal/ProgramListing.aspx?source=PCP

What is PCP?

“Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) are career conversion programmes targeted at Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs), including mid-career switchers, to undergo skills conversion and move into new occupations or sectors that have good prospects and opportunities for progression.

• Place-and-Train: PMET is hired by a participating employer before undergoing training to take on a new job role.
• Attach-and-Train: PMET is provided with training and work attachments, in advance of job placement, through industry partners in growth sectors with good future job opportunities.”

In particular, there was a new launch on 4 areas of job demand and they had worked with a number of financial institutions to target 70 candidates for mid-career switches in the following areas: Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, Full Stack Development and Data Analytics. The duration was between 18 to 24 months and there was a full-time student allowance of up to SGD 5,500 per month. Not bad, right?

As I did not have the necessary qualifications for the first 3 and was already very into AI and Business Analytics (my recent Temasek Polytechnic Specialist Diploma), the natural choice was Data Analytics: https://conversion.mycareersfuture.sg/Portal/ProgramDetails.aspx?ProgID=P00000422

The group of us signed up for the first briefing session on 26 Apr. The moment the 4 of us entered the auditorium, we immediately raise the average age substantially….  hahaha. The room was full of 20 to 30+-year-old attendees and I felt so old. So I guess mid-career to them doesn’t refer to 50+-year-olds… Their briefing pitch was quite clear and they explained the screening steps required. Data analytics was the last topic of the session but I could not stay as we had a family outing to an Ed Sheeran concert that evening. The upside was that we found out that one of the lecturers was an ex-Citibank old-timer and she thought I looked familiar!

Our group sort of wrote off this IBF initiative after the briefing session. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It fitted into the grander scheme of things for my plan to pivot my 29 years of banking work experience into a newer and higher demand area of Big Data analyzing using AI concepts. What the heck, I thought to myself, I should just apply for it just for the fun of knowing I did. Yoda says: “Do or not do, there is no try”.

So a few weeks back, I drummed up enough courage, dust off my CV, updated it and sent out my online application. I included my recently obtained Business Analytics Diploma for greater impact. Maybe I should have added a cover letter too, but they did not ask for it specifically. So I figured that I should just let my experience do the talking instead. The closing date for online application was 31 May.

I was pleasantly surprised on Monday when IBF sent me an email requesting an interview on 31 May! I guess they liked what they see so far and want to get to know me better. I move to the next step with no expectations. I will aim to do this on my terms, hoping to marry this with my existing Myanmar part-time consultancy work. Let’s see how this will work out, one step at a time.

I will be going to Yangon next week for my monthly trip, then it will be a week of preparation for my next quarterly half marathon (Sundown).

I had slowly come to the realization that we are not a nation of book readers. Our top selling book list seemed unchanged for months on end. Crazy Rich Asia has been on the top 20 list for a number of years and most book positions hardly moved. There must only be a very small group of book readers then.

Bottom line, if you ask family members or friends, they will find it hard to tell you when they last picked up a book. It could be the social media onslaught, the Netflix/YouTube video buffet or just too much school or work-related distractions that simply occupy too much of our time.

Instead of dedicating an hour each night before bedtime to read a good book, most of us will probably be glued to our handphones watching videos or scrolling through our social media. I am guilty of that. There was a time when I was serving my national service in the army that I was reading one book a week to kill time. But they were mainly storybooks and there were no mobile phones or internet then.

In America, you can tell that they read a lot more as the best seller book list constantly changes. Authors do book tours and appear on talk shows to promote there books. They even have signing sessions at bookshops and millions of hard copies are sold. Everyone has a story to tell and if they have participated in an important event or knows of someone who has, they can put their writing skills to good use. Even aspiring wannabe authors can create ebooks online to give away or sell them for 99 cents to make decent money. There is a huge audience of avid book readers that are always on the lookout for the next book to read.

I thought that I read more than most people. I subscribed to business magazines and read widely. I needed to be updated on the latest financial news and constantly seek information. Whenever I had the time, I would be holding newspapers or magazines in my hand to read.

For my new year resolution this year, I had resolved to read 10 books for 2019. To date, I have completed 4.5 books so far. I list them in my Notes app and try to do a one paragraph summary to remind me of the books read.

2 months back, my old uni friend KT introduced me to a whole new world of ebooks which I could read for free. He told me about the app called OverDrive which we could download for free to subscribe to. Once in, we can link our NLB (National Library Board) account to the app.

I was amazed that our public national library has a stock of most of the latest ebooks. The best thing is that they will automatically be deleted from our devices once the book reaches the due date. No need to physically return the books anymore. At that time, I was reading the hardcopy of Lee Kai-Fu’s “AI Superpower” book which I had purchased for $26. When I searched for this ebook, NLB had 27 ebook copies available!! I could have saved my money and read for free!

My friend used this app to read 40 books last year and he showed me a summary of the books he had read. While travelling for business, he becomes a serious reader and cultivated a habit of borrowing free ebooks to read on his iPad. I was blown away and felt small as I only had a target of 10 🙂

I have started to introduce this app to a few groups of friends. There should be no excuse to read if the world is your oyster and the ebooks are free, right? Not true, because the person must first want to read more. I am a marketing guy, so I try my best to convince them. But ultimately, I should walk the talk. I should begin the reading habit myself. I should double my book reading goal this year to 20, yes?

 

 

 

Perhaps my timing was good or maybe it was the divine powers above that had led me to this data analytics to AI (Artificial Intelligence) journey. I have learnt a lot in this short 2 years ride but there is still so much more to absorb. The more I plug in the missing information gaps in my understanding of this subject, the more I become fascinated with what had been achieved so far and what can be accomplished in the near future.

After my last working day in my old banking job in Jun 2017, I decided to continue my learning journey in earnest. This initiative started in bits and pieces from 2012 with the discovery of Udemy and Coursera web portals which allowed me to study whatever interests me at that time. Social media topics were big at that time and being an active user, I went into topics like hashtag and affiliate marketing and even started my own blog. When I put my mind into something, I will usually stick to it stubbornly for quite a while (case in point: playing Pokemon Go).

By 2017, the stars had lined up for me to embark on the next phase of my learning journey. The government initiated Skillsfuture push was fully underway. It aimed to help older PMETs like myself, to learn new skills that were relevant to the current world, to reinvent ourselves in order to adapt to the realities of our disappearing jobs.

After completing a few fun courses like Wine and Starting a Business, I had to ask myself: “What’s next?”. How can I utilize my past work experience to pivot into another industry where I could possibly have an edge over younger and more tech-savvy competitors? How can I monetize my 25+ years of banking experience?

In my previous sales role in the American bank, we were developing CRM (Client Relationship Management) systems that were getting bigger and better by the year. We were constantly discovering new powerful tools to help increase revenue via the data mining of client information we had. As the system software is enhanced and improved, we could add in yesterday’s end of day information to the database and move towards real-time updates.

This planted the seed of data analytics in me as a next step. By using my past work experience, perhaps I can pivot into the world of data analytics to provide a business edge, by driving the optimal review process of a company’s database.

I searched around for appropriate Skillsfuture courses which suited my objectives. I also wanted to challenge myself, to see if I could perform outside my comfort zone. Finally, I found a course that checks all my boxes and as a bonus, it will lead to a Specialist Diploma in Business Analytics.  https://www.tp.edu.sg/courses/part-time-courses/industry/ict-and-media/specialist-diploma-in-business-analytics

It was a 12 months long program that conducted evening classes 5 times a month. Because of my age, I also had a huge 90% subsidy for the course fees. I decided to jump head first into this without fear. It started in Sep 2017. As expected, I was one of the oldest students in a class of 26 that consist of younger and more tech inclined people.

The first 6 months were a struggle for me as I tried to grapple with alien IT concepts and new data mining software. Going back to school again was challenging, yet exciting. I felt young again and even looked forward to the assessments and project work, I kid you not!

Very soon the course ended in Sep 2018. By then, I had a taste of what systems are out there to data mine effectively. It also got my feet wet via projects that required presentation skills to bring across the findings in a persuasive way. This course brought me up to date on the huge possibilities of Big Data and the tools that are easily available to create models and spot trends. The human now has all these tools to play around with, to gather insights which the naked eye would not be able to detect.

Around this time, the Alpha Go phenomenon happened. https://www.alphagomovie.com/ Within months, the developers used newer machine learning techniques to develop a better version called Alpha Go Zero which basically utilized reinforced learning to learn and challenge itself. It eventually managed to completely defeat its predecessor (by 100 to 0 games). https://deepmind.com/blog/alphago-zero-learning-scratch/ Within a year, it set off the new global nuclear race by China, which set a national directive and road map on how to become the world supremo in AI. With lots of data available and little privacy issues, China believes that Big Data is the new OPEC oil product to AI.

By this time, my interest in AI and machine learning had deepened a lot. I hunger to know more and also to plug the gaps in my knowledge of this subject. I took an introduction to Fintech MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) to familiarize myself with the foundations of this industry, before signing up for another one on AI in Finance. They led me to various articles which opened my eyes to what I had been doing during my projects in the night classes which helped to make sense of what I had done, to see how they relate to machine learning and AI.

I feel that AI is now not as complicated as it sounds. They are generally extremely narrowly focused but they can do that specific task exceptionally well. The building tools are easily available. The difficult part is to clean the big data and provide the human touch to direct the analysis in order to produce quality models to help predict the future.

My Alibaba study trip to Hangzhou late last year also helped cemented my views that China was way ahead of the AI game. The AI Superpower book by Lee Kai-Fu also emphasized this point. The general consensus is that 30% of current jobs may be taken over by AI in the next 10 to 15 years. This is not something to be taken lightly. Looking around us, the signs are already here. What if driverless cars become the norm? A whole industry of human drivers will be displaced…  My old job as a salesperson can be easily replaced by a robot-advisor that can provide a summary of the best expertise of the top 1,000 professionals through reinforced learning.

My group of friends are also now looking at a chatbot investment opportunity that utilizes AI to refine and improve itself. The opportunities to apply itself into all aspects of the company is mind-blowing. Become an HR (Human Resource) domain expert for all employees? sure. Be an automated online response resource for all external client enquiries? Easy.

It is so fascinating to see how AI can be applied to almost anything. We take certain things like Uber, Airbnb and social media for granted nowadays. But there are multiple AI tools in the background that are customizing solutions on the fly in real time for the clients. Can you imagine that we did not have them only a few years ago? Neither do we want to go back to the days before we had these tools at our fingertips now.

The choice is clear. We will accelerate our AI developments from here. More amazing discoveries will be made and what we think is not possible now will become the norm in the near future. The future is so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades!!!