Monday Wrap: Business costs softens, Singapore to use AI in courtrooms, and 2026 investment volumes to surpass 2025

November marks the softest expansion in three months.

Last week in Singapore Business Review, ‘Purchasing Managers’ Index’ fell to 55.4 in November from 57.4 in October, marking the softest expansion in three months, according to an S&P Global report.

Meanwhile, Singapore is introducing an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool for its Small Claims Tribunals (SCT) to summarise case documents for magistrates and improve access for self-represented litigants, a move aimed at easing caseload pressures and raising efficiency in lower courts.

Investment volumes in 2026 are expected to surpass 2025 levels as the volumes for this year already exceeded the figure of the previous period.

In the manufacturing industry, Singapore expects positive business conditions up to March of next year, with the electronics and transport engineering sectors being the most optimistic, showing 30 and 13 net weighted balances, respectively, Cushman & Wakefield said in its Singapore Market Outlook 2026.

SkillsFuture Singapore is upgrading its workforce-planning tools after more than 27,000 companies used them this year, marking one of the fastest adoption cycles for the agency’s digital services.

Singapore’s HDB rental market is expected to face a cautious outlook in 2026, with softer gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1% to 3%, cautious hiring, and higher S Pass qualifying salaries from September 2025, likely to weigh on demand.

Next year, employers plan to freeze hiring with 58% expecting to hold headcount steady in 2026 compared with 50% a year earlier, according to a new survey by the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF).

The Monetary Authority of Singapore also announced that it is stepping up oversight of social media influencers and banks marketing financial products, signalling that online promotion without proper licensing can carry serious consequences.

In other financial news, demand for remote work in Singapore’s insurance sector increased 15.3% on a year-on-year basis, revealed Indeed’s Hiring Lab.

Singapore’s billionaire wealth rose to $335.36b (USD258.8b) in 2025, an increase of 66.4% year-on-year (YoY), according to UBS’s Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025. The rise pushed Singapore ahead of Australia to become the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region’s third-largest billionaire market.

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