Opening Address by Acting Minister for Manpower Jasmin Lau at the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants Conference 2026

Mr Lee Boon Teck, President of ISCA

Mr George Yeo, former Minister for Foreign Affairs

Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

1. Good morning.

2. Thank you, ISCA, for having me at this year’s Conference.

3. This year’s theme is about resilience in a multipolar economy. I am very glad that Mr George Yeo will be delivering the keynote after me. Mr Yeo has spent much of his life thinking about the shifts in the global economy and the world that this theme refers to, and many of us in public service have learnt a great deal from him. So I will do the sensible thing and leave the multipolar world to him. Anything I could say about geopolitics this morning, he will say better and with far more history.

4. Instead, I will speak about something closer to my work at MOM, which is what resilience means for the people in your profession, especially those just starting out.

Judgement and trust

5. Resilience is the capacity to adapt and act when established assumptions no longer hold.

6. In my years serving in the Government, when a decision is difficult and the information is incomplete, it helped me a lot to have people in the room who are able to dive into the data, into the numbers, into assumptions, and ask how sure we really are about what is in front of us. Quite often, that person has a background in accountancy.

7. I expect many more businesses and governments will need this even more in the years ahead. The AI tools that we have can churn out analyses very quickly. But someone still has to decide whether that analysis makes sense, and take responsibility for it. Investors and regulators trust Singapore’s financial reporting partly because our accountants take that responsibility seriously. I was remarking to the ISCA leaders this morning that in the government, we work with so many leaders who came up through the accountancy profession, but now chair many of our national committees. There is a certain trust in what our accountants can do, and the trust in the advice that they give to all of us.

Young people and the profession

8. A resilient profession is one that young people still want to join. I know that, when they read about AI, a lot of students are asking whether accountancy is still a good choice. It is a fair question. I think the profession knows the answer, starting with what students are now learning in school.

9. Accountancy degrees today look very different from when many of you studied in school when we were younger. Students still build a strong foundation in accounting, finance and business law.

10. But alongside the fundamentals, our students now also learn data analytics and AI. Some take a second major in financial forensics, others do a double degree with data science. And internships are now built into their degree programmes, so they see real work before they graduate.

11. This training travels very far. An accountancy graduate understands where an organisation’s risks lie, how a business makes money, and whether the numbers can be trusted. This is useful in an audit firm, useful in a bank, and useful in a tech company, a hospital or a government agency. Many of our CFOs and CEOs started out this way, working through the ranks, and so did quite a few public servants and politicians that I have worked with. For a young person, that range of options is what resilience is about.

12. Our employers clearly value this. Our accountancy graduates have high employment rates of more than 93 per cent, and strong median starting salaries. ACRA’s Accounting Entities Survey shows the sector grew last year, with operating receipts up 5.1 per cent, employment above 22,300, and more than 1,200 positions still unfilled. The survey also showed that median salaries increased across all seniority levels, reflecting that accountancy is an attractive career throughout the career journey of an accountant.

13. So there is good reason for confidence. But whether the profession stays resilient depends on what firms do next, which in turn depends on all of you in the room today. Now, much of the routine work that AI is starting to handle, such as reconciliations and first drafts, is also how young accountants have traditionally learnt the craft. Many of you here will remember what your early days in your profession was like. As firms automate many of these tasks, I hope they will also think about how juniors can still develop a feel for when something does not look right.

14. Done well, this could make entry-level roles more interesting than before. Our fresh graduates could spend more time reviewing and questioning what the tools produce. They can go with senior colleagues on the harder calls, and meet clients earlier in their careers than many of you did. This will take deliberate effort from employers, and also trust in our younger graduates, in training them and in giving them real responsibilities from the start.

15. Our partners are already working on this. Earlier this year, ISCA and IMDA launched AIxAccountancy, an AI fluency programme for accountancy and finance professionals.

16. Today, ISCA will sign an MOU with the five polytechnics and ITE to give students AI training, mentorship and internships before they start work. ACRA will also release practice guidance on auditing digital assets.

17. I hope all of this gives students, and their parents, a clearer picture of what a career in accountancy looks like today.

Keeping experienced people

18. So that was fresh graduates. A resilient profession also holds on to its experienced people. As our population ages, more professionals are caring for young children and elderly parents at the same time. With the right arrangements, many of them would gladly keep working, and firms would benefit from their experience. As a female minister in MOM, this is my personal passion: to create workplaces where caregivers, in particular females, can work, but also have enough space and time for their loved ones at home. It is a personal passion which I intend to pursue for as long as I’m in this role.

19. ISCA is building a pool of accountancy professionals who are interested in contract roles. A firm with an employee on extended parental or caregiving leave can bring in qualified help, and professionals who need more flexibility can keep their skills in use. Larger firms can usually manage a long absence on their own. But for smaller firms with a small practice with only a handful of staff, will find it more difficult, and this is where an industry association like ISCA can make a real difference.

20. This effort, FlexConnect, is still at the pilot stage, but I think it is a good idea and I hope it grows.

Workforce Transformation Award

21. Some firms are already putting these ideas into practice. I am happy to present the Skills and Workforce Development Agency’s Workforce Transformation Award for the Accountancy Sector to Ernst & Young and Nexia today.

22. The award recognises employers that have made great efforts to transform jobs and workforce practices, develop their employees’ skills and capabilities, and deliver meaningful outcomes for both their workforce and organisation.

23. EY has redesigned roles and trained its people in analytics and automation. This has freed up time on work for them to spend on making better judgment and assessing risks. At Nexia, their workers now use digital audit tools to handle repetitive tasks and build better dashboards, so they can spend more time on professional judgment and advisory for their clients.

24. Both award recipients have shown what resilience means in practice: embracing change while continuing to invest in their people.

25. Congratulations to the two award recipients. I hope more firms will follow your example.

Conclusion

26. Accountancy as a profession has adapted many times, from paper ledgers to spreadsheets and beyond. Each time, the tools have changed, but the profession’s core responsibility stayed the same: to give people confidence in the numbers.

27. I expect the same will hold true with AI, and that, to me, is what resilience will look like for this profession.

28. Please keep sharing with us what you are seeing on the ground, especially about young people entering the profession, so that we can continue to support all of them well.

29. Thank you, and I wish everyone a fruitful conference.