Monday Wrap: Young architects rise, insurers rethink adequacy, AI trust gaps widen

Architecture's young talent, a shift in insurance strategy, AI trust gaps, and rising bank margins mark the week.

Last week in Singapore Business Review, eight architects under 40 were named for their work on hospitals, civic infrastructure, and heritage projects. Etiqa Insurance said the industry's challenge is shifting from expanding coverage to ensuring adequacy as customers plan for retirement and wealth transfer. Nearly all IT leaders reported artificial intelligence (AI) tools accessing sensitive data without permission, whilst AI shopping adoption climbed even as checkout trust lagged. Banks, meanwhile, are expected to see margins rise as SORA climbs toward 1.4% by year-end.

Singapore Business Review's list of notable architecture professionals under 40 for 2026 features eight honourees—five women and three men—from DP Architects, SAA Architects, RSP Architects Planners & Engineers, CPG Consultants, and Chang Architects. Their combined portfolio spans a $790m hotel (the largest Mercure property worldwide), Singapore's first fully integrated healthcare campus at Woodlands Hospital, and civic landmarks including One Punggol's Regional Library and the Goh Keng Swee Centre for Education, a 30-storey office tower under active construction.

Standout work included Kelvin Ng Si Hoa's role delivering Woodlands Hospital despite expressway noise and rocky terrain constraints, and Loh Zhu Ping's contributions to the $450m Funan Redevelopment and the $790m Mercure ICON Singapore City Centre.

Singapore insurers should shift focus from expanding coverage to ensuring policy adequacy, according to Etiqa Insurance Singapore CEO Claudia Soh, as customers increasingly treat insurance as part of long-term financial planning rather than pure protection against loss. Singapore's insurance penetration stood at 7.6% of GDP as of May 2026, ranking fourth among selected Asian markets behind South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

A May CIMB report found 52.6% of residents viewed insurance as supporting financial independence, up from 45% in 2025, with customers increasingly looking at retirement, wealth-building, and inheritance planning. Soh said AI can help insurers tailor services but cautioned that "trust, human judgement, and meaningful customer relationships remain just as important."

Nearly all Singaporean IT leaders (98.9%) reported an AI tool or agent accessing sensitive data beyond its intended scope in the past year, the second-highest rate among eight markets surveyed in Delinea's 2026 Identity Security Report.

Despite 99.6% of organisations having a formal AI data access policy, only 14% of IT leaders can detect a scope violation as it happens, and 72% take a full day or longer to catch one—the highest globally. Employee behaviour compounds the risk: 84% of Singaporean employees said they have bypassed required approval processes for AI use, and just 38% of IT leaders said they can always trace a sensitive access event back to a named human authoriser.

Singapore consumers are increasingly shopping with AI, but remain wary of letting it complete purchases, according to Adyen's 2026 Singapore Retail Report. Whilst 72% of consumers use AI assistants for shopping, only 29% are comfortable letting AI complete a purchase, and 49% of existing AI shopping users hesitate at the payment stage.

Still, AI-referred visitors generate 53% more revenue per visit and convert 54% more than non-AI traffic. Separately, Salesforce's State of Commerce report found 82% of Singapore commerce leaders expect large language models to become essential to product discovery within the year, with agentic search usage as a shopping-journey starting point up 200% year-over-year.

Singapore's three-month benchmark borrowing rate is expected to climb to 1.4% by year-end, supporting bank margins into 2027, according to UOB Kay Hian. The three-month compounded SORA rose to 1.22% in the third quarter after falling to 1.02% in April, reflecting MAS's tighter monetary policy stance amid slowing money supply growth.

UOB Kay Hian raised its 2027 net profit forecasts for DBS and OCBC by 5.7% and 4.7% respectively, citing expected margin gains, whilst flagging risks from elevated US rates and potential Red Sea shipping disruptions that could push freight and oil costs higher.