Second Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong

Customers of OCBC, UOB, DBS and Standard Chartered Bank will not have to supply documents such as income tax statements for new bank accounts application announced.
Myinfo, a Government-backed initiative allows those banks with the consumers’ consent to digitally pull data such as income tax statements and public housing ownership from MyInfo, a government-backed digital vault of citizens’ personal data launched in May 2016.
The Second Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong informed the initiative during the debate on his ministry’s budget in Parliament on Tuesday (7 Mar).
The government will be looking at expanding this service to allow the information to be used for loan or credit card application.
For starters, this will be available in a pilot for citizens to open bank accounts (with the four banks), said Mr Wong.
Mr Wong was answering a question asked by Ms Foo Mee Har (West Coast GRC) on how the Government is leading the way in digital transformation.
Mr Wong, who is also the National Development Minister said, “One inconvenience that citizens sometimes face is the need to submit the same data repeatedly to different government agencies, and provide supporting documents to verify their data.”
He explained that more than 150 government digital services will be linked to MyInfo by 2018.
MyInfo has around 100,000 citizen sign-ups so far, it pulls together their personal data from across government agencies into a single profile for each citizen. Users can key in additional information on their income, education, employment and family.

image: govinsider.asia
image: govinsider.asia
The agencies are the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and the Urban Redevelopment Authority.
At present, the data in the consolidated repository can be used for a handful of e-services provided by 9 agencies. The services include applying for or renewing work permits for domestic helpers, and applying for public housing.
Every time citizens choose to use MyInfo, agencies will ask for consent on the specific data that will be used.
Edit: In the previous version of this article, it was mentioned that the new service is meant for loan or credit card applications, it has been corrected to new bank applications. And that the e-services providing the data is 9 and not 12.

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