Singapore! The World’s Money, And What Comes Next. Friday’s Edition.
The Long Chain: Singapore. Series 33 #3
On 14 January 2025, at a UBS wealth conference in Singapore, Chee Hong Tat, deputy chairman of Singapore’s central bank and Second Minister for Finance, revealed that more than 2,000 family offices, private firms that each manage one wealthy family’s fortune, now operated from Singapore. Five years earlier, only about 400 family offices operated there. By the end of 2024, Singapore’s money-management firms held 6.07 trillion Singapore dollars, more than three-quarters of that money from outside the country.
The world’s rich are moving their money to an island with no natural resources. Monday’s Edition traced how wind, a free port, and migration made colonial Singapore rich and shaped its distinct culture, one that would later make the country fabulously rich. Wednesday’s Edition traced how three shocks forced Singapore to build a tight, fast-deciding state. Friday’s Edition covers what that state did to improve people’s lives and what it will most likely do next.
One of the government’s first steps was to force workers to save money. Since 1955, Singapore has required workers and their employers to pay part of each month’s pay into a savings account in the worker’s name, the Central Provident Fund; by 1984, the worker’s and employer’s combined payment reached half of the worker’s monthly pay. In 1968, the government allowed individuals to buy a government-built flat using their savings. Flat applications rose from about 3,000 in 1967 to about 70,000 in 1968. Today, about 80% of Singaporeans live in government-built flats, and about 90% own their homes, among the highest home-ownership rates in the world. And government housing in Singapore is first-rate. Those who can afford private housing often choose government flats.
