Date: For Parliament Sitting on 5 August 2026

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Ms He Ting Ru, Sengkang GRC

Question

Ms He Ting Ru: To ask the Prime Minister and Minister for Finance (a) what assessment the Government has made of the effectiveness of Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing (ML/TF) Information & Cases (COSMIC) as a platform for financial institutions to share information on customers exhibiting money laundering red flags; and (b) what is the timeline of implementation for the planned expansion of COSMIC to include additional major banks and a wider range of significant cases.

Answer by Mr Alvin Tan, Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of National Development, and Board member of MAS, on behalf of Mr Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry, and Chairman of MAS:

1. MAS launched the Collaborative Sharing of ML/TF Information & Cases (COSMIC) on 1 April 2024, to facilitate the sharing of risk information among banks to detect and disrupt illicit fund flows in the financial sector. COSMIC’s initial phase involved six major commercial banks in Singapore, and targeted three key financial crime risks - (a) misuse of legal persons; (b) misuse of trade finance for illicit purposes; and (c) proliferation financing.

2. Since its launch, COSMIC has enhanced participant banks’ ability to detect bad actors and strengthened our financial sector’s defences against financial crime. Arising from information shared on the platform, COSMIC participant banks filed additional suspicious transaction reports. Further, following participant banks’ review and investigations, a significant number of suspicious customer accounts were closed. The information shared on COSMIC also allowed participant banks and MAS to identify suspicious networks for timely review, and supported authorities’ investigations. COSMIC’s effectiveness was affirmed in the recent Mutual Evaluation assessment of Singapore by the Financial Action Task Force.

3. Given these positive outcomes, MAS has been working with the industry to expand the use of COSMIC. It is widening COSMIC’s scope beyond the three targeted financial crime risk areas, and onboarding other major banks that are close partners in our AML/CFT/CPF efforts. This expansion is scheduled for completion within 2 years. MAS will carefully manage COSMIC’s expansion, to reap the benefits of information sharing while balancing against considerations of undue de-risking and confidentiality of customer information.

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