Our Story
How Senova began
Senova came together in 2019 when a small group of adult educators and former banking professionals noticed a gap in Singapore's continuing education landscape. Plenty of courses existed for those entering the workforce. Almost nothing was available for adults in their forties and fifties who wanted to think more carefully about the financial habits of their working years — not to be sold something, but simply to read, discuss, and reflect.
The founding team drew on backgrounds in adult learning, library studies, and household financial planning. They were less interested in certificates than in the quality of a slow, considered conversation. The first reading circle ran in early 2020 with eleven participants around a table in a borrowed meeting room in Tanjong Pagar. The format has not changed much since.
Today, Senova operates from a reading room at Guoco Tower, one of Singapore's quieter commercial spaces, chosen deliberately for its distance from the bustle of the central shopping belt. Three structured programmes run each quarter, with cohorts kept small enough that every participant's voice is part of the conversation.
The organisation holds no financial advisory licence and actively avoids any arrangement that might compromise the educational independence of its programmes. No sponsor pays to present a product inside a Senova session. No facilitator is on commission. The reading materials are chosen for clarity, not for affiliation.
Mission
What Senova stands for
Reading over Selling
Every programme begins with a text. Discussions follow the reading, not a presenter's pitch.
Independence
No financial product is promoted inside a Senova session, ever. The reading room remains a space free of commercial agenda.
Pace and Depth
Adult learning rarely benefits from speed. Senova formats are slow on purpose — with space for the kind of question that takes a moment to form.
The People
Who runs the programmes
Rachel Lim
Programme Director
Fifteen years in adult continuing education across Singapore and Hong Kong. Designs the reading sequences and facilitates the Retirement Income Mapping Series.
Marcus Tan
Content & Research
Former policy researcher with MAS experience. Selects and adapts the reading materials, ensuring accuracy without veering into regulated advice territory.
Siti Norzahra
Participant Engagement
Manages cohort scheduling, participant communications, and the physical reading materials that accompany each programme.
Our Standards
How we work
Editorial Independence
Reading materials are selected and reviewed by the content team without sponsor input. No advertiser has access to programme content.
Data Privacy
Participant details are held securely and used only for programme administration. No list is shared with any third party. PDPA obligations are observed in full.
Accuracy Review
All factual content referencing CPF, SRS, or other regulatory frameworks is reviewed for accuracy before each cohort begins. Materials are updated when policy changes.
Appropriate Cohort Size
Cohorts are capped to maintain discussion quality. Once a cohort is full, a new cohort is scheduled rather than expanding the existing one.
Educator Qualifications
Programme facilitators hold qualifications in adult education or relevant professional experience. None are licensed financial advisers — this is intentional and disclosed.
Participant Feedback
Written feedback is collected from every cohort. Findings inform the next iteration of reading selections and session structure.
Our Expertise
The thinking behind Senova's programmes
Adults in their forties and fifties occupy a distinct moment in the financial arc of a working life. The patterns of the early career have had time to settle into habits — some deliberate, many inherited. The horizon of working income is visible in a way it was not at thirty. And the vocabulary of retirement — CPF Life, SRS, annuities, drawdown sequences — begins to feel personally relevant rather than abstractly theoretical.
Senova's programmes are designed for this particular moment. The reading materials are chosen to introduce that vocabulary without overwhelming it. The discussion format is designed to surface the questions people already carry but rarely find a space to ask. The absence of a product recommendation or advisory agenda is not an oversight — it is the architecture of trust on which the whole approach rests.
Over five years of running cohorts at Guoco Tower, the team has developed a body of reading material adapted to the Singapore household — drawing on CPF Board publications, MAS financial literacy resources, and the growing literature on household economics and behavioural patterns around money. The language used in sessions is deliberately plain. Technical terms are introduced through the readings and defined before discussion begins.
Participants consistently note two things: that the small group setting made it possible to ask questions they would not ask in a seminar, and that having a text to discuss gave the conversation a structure that did not feel like pressure. Both observations have shaped how Senova continues to develop its programmes.
Enrolment
Find out about the next cohort
If you would like to know which programmes are currently open, what the reading materials cover, or whether a particular format suits your schedule, send an enquiry and the team will respond within two working days.
Send an Enquiry