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Tuesday, 13 January 2026

SingPost: profitability down, operations... Management should be responsible, no?

I spent 1 hour 14mins at SingPost, trying to send an envelope overseas. I could not believe SingPost could be that inefficient. But basic research shows I was wrong.

SingPost is the designated public postal licensee for domestic and international mail in Singapore. It is also partially owned by Singtel (hmmm...), now given NCS is also owned by Singtel, sounds more like SingKnow than SingTell. Anyway, today is about SingPost.

SingPost has been in the news recently for shall we say interesting management appointments and decisions culminating in the firing of the group CEO, group CFO and CEO of their international unit. (1)

This is after a whistleblower report in early 2024 alleging manual entries on a large scale in some accounts apparently without supporting documents.

This manual entry took place in international deliveries, apparently to avoid contractual penalties.

3 things stand out

1 it is not very difficult, in the system, to make manual entries. Chances these are not tracked, else either this practice has been going on for a long while and this didn't show as a spike in manual activities.

While SingPost argues that there are no fraud-proof systems (2), this kind of manual overrides are usually tracked.

It is way too easy to play hanky-panky when manual entries are common in operations. To me these are systems almost designed to be used in interesting ways.

2 Even if manual corrections are allowed, there usually is a process that involves management approval. This, together with the fact that the alleged irregularities were designed to avoid SingPost paying penalties, point to likelihood of management involvement in the scheme.

3 the system that allows the manual changes without proper tracking has been designed this way. This is therefore a deliberate decision by SingPost management. Now note that I am not saying that this is a system that management created to allow fraud, but more the mindset that automation is optional, or that manual handling somehow adds business value to SingPost. My recent experience suggests the latter.

Not surprisingly profitability of SingPost has been going down. Profits fell from $83m in 2021/22 to $24m (after excluding divestment proceeds) in 2024/25, the share price from 72c in 2022, 41c nowadays.

Sure, post offices around the world are facing profitability challenges. How you respond is the key. And to me, SingPost is bound to continue its downward spiral unless a serious change of direction and management takes place.

DeepAis view of an envelope in a storm drain

Have you been to a SingPost branch recently?

First of all, so many have closed that I had problems finding one.

Most of us know that SingPost has become a point where you can pick up Singapore passports and cards. That's a positive thing, customers can use SingPost branches still open, rather than go to ICA in town. I am sure SingPost gets paid for the use of their premises and staff.

They also have tie ups with banks and insurance companies and SingPost branches are now lelong-lelong market with financial touts. They occupy a large chunk of the premises, bothering SingPost customers, and blocking the way to services.

Self-service stuff like weighing machines to help you count your postage costs are hidden, with poor instructions.

So, you have no choice but to queue, and find only a limited number of counters to postage related stuff, some non-exclusively.

When your number is finally called, there's a fun activity, at least for me. You see, I had earlier bought and envelope from SingPost itself. And it had the template to fill up senders and recipients using old fashioned pen on the paper. I did.

When I reached my counter, I had to verbally communicate the details written on the envelope, then lo and behold I was asked to scan a QR code, and fill up electronic form which requires the same info. Then after multiple queries due to lousy form design, a sticker was printed out which I had to stick on the envelope, walk to a post office box, and drop it in myself.

Not only does SingPost push a lot of admin stuff to the customer but it does it so badly that unless you are a regular user, you will get stuck. And it is not just me, quite a few other customers were fiddling with their phones, filling up the forms and asking for assistance from the counter staff they had dealt with.

May be that's a ploy to justify the presence of staff at the counter. But seriously, better form design would have saved everybody a lot of time.

Better still make the whole thing automated. If the staff's main answer is "that's the system" then I might as well deal with the system directly.

In a word, the designed operations of SingPost suck. Big time. A straight F. I have worked in making operations more efficient, I have experienced postal services in many countries, including in the 3rd world.

SingPost is the worse I have experienced. It is not the staff's fault, is purely design and management. And given the above, it is no surprise things are going downhill.

I actually asked the staff at the counter, isn't answering customer questions more tiring and take more time than filling things up yourself as was done before. She said is about the same.

Imagine that, spend millions, and have "about the same" efficiency.

Who will use SingPost postage services if posting an envelope takes 1hr14mins? This is just another example of horrible management, unable to make operations efficient and show care for customers by designing systems accordingly.

Tuesday, 21 October 2025

Leave Mr Ng Chee Meng to focus on important things, NTUC Income, and sort your senior management out!

Recently, NTUC Income made the news again, they lost a court case against a customer (who has not lived to see justice done to him) (1). However, the secretary general of the Union himself, Mr Ng Chee Meng, has had to issue a statement regarding the case.

Some background
When you buy insurance, you are getting into a contract with the insurer. A simplified view of the process and responsibilities is as follows:

1 you have to be truthful when answering the questions of the insurer/agent/broker. This is because, based on the answers you give the amount of risk the insurer estimates it would be taking is calculated. Then based on the risk, the insurer will decide whether to agree to the contract, and if yes, what premium you have to pay to have the insurer cover you.
An example will make things easier. Say you want the insurer to pay a certain sum to your family in case you die within a number of years; in the event your death within that period, the insurer will pay the agreed sum, alleviating the financial burden to your family. Among the questions you are likely to face are about your habits, for example whether you smoke and how much. All things equal, regular smokers have higher risk of death than non-smokers. So if you smoke a pack a day compared to someone who doesn't smoke, then chances of you dying within a period are higher, hence the insurer would bear higher risk with you, and likely as for higher premium.
So if you lie, technically, the contract may be invalidated, and often the insurer would at most just return the premium paid minus costs.

2 once the answers are obtained, a bunch of people called underwriters will look at the information, and based on this calculate the appropriate premium, or even recommend to decline if the risks are beyond an acceptable limit usually set by the company.

3 usually, once you "sign on the dotted line", you are covered by the insurer even if the paperwork has not been issued. There have been claims made before the actual insurance contract has been issued. For example, I used to buy travel insurance at the airport, and receive the policy after my trip is completed.

4 if the event you have insured against occurs, then you file a claim, basically telling the insurer, hey, this has happened, can you please compensate me as per the insurance contract. The majority of cases of dispute happen when a claim is made. Obviously, if there is no claim and premiums are paid on time, there is no reason for the insurer to check on the policy, they are making money. But if a claim is made, that's when a different team will take over.

5 the claims process can vary widely across different insurers. Usually, cases where the quantum to be paid out is large enough, or there is some suspicion of fraudulent or extra risky behaviour on the part of the insured go in front of the claims committee.

A few years ago in Singapore, it was widely known that a certain 3 letter insurer would pay for car accidents very quickly, even if the amount was non-trivial. In exchange they charged higher premiums.

This was a matter of policy for the insurer, and people who valued quick payment would go for them.

This is the key; these decisions are driven by policy. Senior management of the insurer made the decision.

In one of my roles, we worked to automate the motor vehicle insurance claims process. Part of the automation was to choose different processes for different claims, based mainly on the size of the claim and some indicators on the claimant. The key here is that the thresholds and the conditions for differed processing were decided by senior management/ownership.

Actually, the same is done for underwriting, this is important for insurers who want to differentiated by speed felt by the customer.

In sum, I reiterate, how an insurer deals with claims (and customer relationships as a whole) is a matter of strategy and policy; it is not a fixed thing. The way Income deals with claimants is a deliberate senior management choice.

Now let's look at the case that brought the way Income dealt with a customer to the fore and the reason Brother Ng had to apologise and promise to do better again.

The case (2)
Mr Ko Wah, then 78 was knocked down and rendered bedridden by a van in a basement car park in 2019. The van was insured by Income. The son of Mr Ko Wah sued the driver and owner of the van in 2021. Income assumed the defence as the insurer and contested the charges.

Mr Ko Wah died in 2024 before the quantum of damages was decided.

A little collection of words the judge used to characterise the behaviour of Income is enlightening:
"Wholly unreasonable behaviour"
"Unfounded objections"
"Impersonal stonewalling"
"Callous and meritless" objections
"Remarkably thin" arguments

Some examples of the behaviour:
Refusing to pay expenses covered by Medishield (the claimant's own medical insurance) despite precedent clearly allowing it
Refusing to pay for ambulance services in transporting Mr Ko Wah
And to me the most horrible,
Claiming there was no need to compensate for pain and suffering since the victim was in coma.

While you can argue that lawyers were overzealous, their strategy and behaviour is discussed with and agreed by the client, here Income. The lawyer could not have taken such an approach without Income’s instructions.

Again I reiterate, the behaviour that made Deputy Registrar Kim Bum Soo who expressed "the court's unmixed dissatisfaction with the manner in which NTUC Income has conducted itself" is the result of a deliberate policy choice on the part of Income.

Hence Mr Ng Chee Meng, Secretary General of NTUC, the majority shareholder of NTUC Income apologising.

Note that Mr Ng is not on the board of directors of NTUC Income (3) and obviously neither would he be involved in any executive function.

In fact, it is NTUC enterprise that is the arm of the union that owns the portfolio. Mr Ng Chee Meng, as secretary general of NTUC is a member of the board of NTUC Enterprise whose chairman is Mr Lim Boon Heng, previously minister in prime minister's office.

The apology (4)(5)
Mr Ng explained the NTUC held itself to "a high standard of fairness, integrity and compassion" on his personal Facebook page while highlighting that NTUC plays no role in the day to day commercial decisions of entities such as NTUC Income.

In fact, this is not the 1st time Mr Ng has been forced to apologise for something Income has done or not done.

In the case of the proposed sale of majority share of Income to Allianz (6), after the debacle, Mr Ng Chee Meng apologised and promised to "do better" (7).

In retrospect, given the fact that NTUC Enterprise was willing to sell NTUC Income and NTUC Income defended its social compact would be protected within the sale, it should not be surprising that the behaviour of NTUC Income represents the worse of vulture capitalist behaviour.

In sum
In my view, the senior management of NTUC Income is wholly responsible for the strategic behaviour, as shown by the "unmixed dissatisfaction" felt by the court. I really wonder how serious NTUC Enterprise is in promoting values of NTUC (the union) to its entities given the insurer NTUC Income consistently falling short of the standards of "fairness, integrity and compassion". The same management team is in charge of NTUC income since the Allianz debacle.

While the buck has to stop somewhere, especially as close to the top as possible, it is not reasonable for the head of a shareholder organisation to take the hit for the executive, again. But if he feels that he has been unable to fulfil his role to hold NTUC Income to the high standards of NTUC, then he will no doubt do the honourable thing.

In normal circumstances, I would expect the executives of NTUC Income to pay the price for their successive decisions that have splattered some mud on the image of the once proud NTUC Income.

Mr Ng was a career military man, having brought his discipline even as Minister for Education, towards teachers (8) enforcing respect such as standing when the minister is speaking, should feel let down or unable to uphold his standards.

He made the wise decision of pre-emptively refusing any cabinet appointment. This was partly due to the hoo-hah over the dinner Mr Ng had with people, including Mr Su Haijin (10), someone who was afterwards convicted of being art of a very large money laundering operation in Singapore (11).

May be it is time for Mr Ng to break away from the cycle and existing advice circle and focus on his role as member of parliament if he chooses not to stand for election again in a role where his standards have not been followed, as Secretary General of NTUC, and focus on serving Jalan Kayu residents who, I am sure, would be glad of his personal undivided attention. His current efforts are like the Sengkang line (12) or the giant umbrellas at the cross-walk to shade residents from the harsh sun (13).

https://mustsharenews.com/ng-chee-meng-umbrellas/

(13)

Sunday, 6 July 2025

is $30m in fines a lot? what if it involved $3b..? Context matters

If for a $3b illegal act, the fine imposed was slightly under $30m, that’s around 1%.

What would you think?

Context

The $3b offence is the case of money laundering in Singapore (1). In summary a bunch of people native from China but carrying exotic passports such as Vanuatu, St Lucia, Cyprus, were accused and sentenced for laundering around $3b in Singapore over a period of time.

To make things more spicy, one of the money launderers was found to have wined and dined with some politicians, even during covid restrictions, as invited by another business tycoon. So the money launderers were definitely not hiding and isolated in Singapore.

A bunch of these individuals was tried and found guilty of various offences, served their offences and left Singapore to various 3^rd countries. Some assets were seized from them. (2). For example, Mr SU Jianfeng was sentenced to 17 months in Singapore jails, and this includes punishment for hiring a personal chef without valid work permit, forging documents submitted to banks such as OCBC, Maybank (3)

A nice list of people arrested and their sentences is (4):

The article (4) makes 2 very interesting points

- The betting syndicate involved started operating as early as 2012

- There are people involved who escaped Singapore justice

Just for fun, if you refer back to the list of individuals and sentences in (2), you will note that the individuals, in some cases, forfeited less than 100% of illegally obtained assets.

The length of time this syndicate ran was confirmed by the straits times (2)

“Wang Dehai - who was in the business for 10 years from 2012 - worked in customer service for the remote gambling enterprise before becoming a promoter. He was given a 3 per cent share in annual profits, with his total income in 2016 alone amounting to more than S$15 million.”

Mr Wang was one of those who forfeited only 90% of his assets.

Anyway, this blog is about the recent fine, so let’s stay on topic.

So what is the fine for?

The whole point of laundering money is to make money seem legal by pushing it through the legal financial system. As someone who worked in a bank before, bank employees are drummed with compulsory anti-money-laundering ‘online classes’ that need to be passed yearly.

But if duplicitous actors are so smart to by-pass the oh-so-amazing anti-money-laundering checks made by banks and financial institutions, then how are these institutions made of correct their behaviour?

A tap on the wrist

Well, the MAS (Singapore’s Central Bank) has just published the fines imposed on various banks involved in the saga. For $3b of money laundered, banks have to pay slightly under 1pct, $30m. (5)

I really wonder how bad at managing funds can banks be if they do not make at least 1% of funds they get their hands on for any amount of time, let alone some cases that ran into years.

So to me, the less than 1% fine is not even a tap on the wrist, is just a gently wagging finger and “don’t do this again”.

Conclusion

Do you think that 1% is good enough a deterrent for banks? I personally find the amount really small compared to how much they should have benefited. Plus the eagled-eyed among you would have noted that not all financial institutions mentioned in detailed reports of actions of the individuals (2) are included in the fines (5)

As an individual, would say 10% of $49m (ignoring the lifestyle) plus however much you should have squirrelled to other exotic bank accounts be enough to risk say 17 months in Singapore jails? Even $1m can go a very very long was say in Vanuatu, a beautiful island with a GDP per head of under $4,000.