SINGAPORE Post (SingPost) has appointed Neo Su Yin as its group chief operating officer (COO), effective Thursday (Jan 2).
Her appointment comes after SingPost sacked three senior executives.
In this newly created role, Neo will oversee the group’s Singapore and international business units and property. She will also take guidance from board chairman Simon Israel, said SingPost.
“The position of the group COO is a pivotal role to translate transformation into tangible results, ensuring high-quality execution, while fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement,” noted the group.
It added that Neo will also work with the board in a review of the group’s international business unit.
Neo, 44, joined the group in April 2019 as vice-president of its customer experience department.
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She was appointed as SingPost’s Singapore chief executive from November 2021 to April 2024. During her tenure, she oversaw enhancements across key operational areas, including last-mile delivery, digital transformation and postal operations optimisation.
She then moved to dnata as managing director for Singapore, overseeing ground handling and cargo operations at Changi Airport.
Neo is a graduate of the University of Nottingham in the UK, as well as the US Naval War College.
Earlier this week, SingPost appointed Isaac Mah, former finance head of Australian operations, as group chief financial officer. The group has yet to name a new CEO.
Parcelgate
In December, SingPost fired three of its senior executives after they were found to be negligent in the handling of internal investigations over a whistle-blower’s report that it received earlier in 2024.
The executives are the former group CEO Vincent Phang, group chief financial officer Vincent Yik, and CEO of the company’s international business unit Li Yu.
Phang was also asked to resign as a director of SingPost and all its related companies, said SingPost on Dec 22. All three executives are contesting their terminations.
The whistle-blower’s report was related to its non-regulated international e-commerce logistics parcels business.
Investigations by SingPost into the report found that three managers in the international business unit had “committed serious breaches of the company’s code of conduct” for deliveries for “one of its largest” customers.
They had performed or approved manual updates of the “delivery failure” (DF) status code for parcels SingPost had agreed to deliver – without supporting documents and even though no delivery attempt had been made.
On Sunday, SingPost released a detailed account of its due process leading up to the three senior executives’ termination. It also said the trio were given the opportunity to be heard before the decision was made to fire them.
Subsequently, Phang and Yik issued their joint statement on New Year’s Eve in response to SingPost’s detailed account of its due process.
They said that management had not been part of initial investigations after the whistle-blowing reports were first received, and were asked for their views on Mar 11 and Apr 3 based on limited information and context.
They noted that the full facts of the report were only made known to them on Apr 27.
Phang and Yik said that a “significant majority” of the shipments with false DF codes were linked to destinations where there were known issues, such as conflict zones such as Israel.
They added that “it was therefore important to establish the financial impact prior to communicating with the customer as well as determining any wrongdoing by junior staff members”.
SingPost said that all of its contracts with its customers include clauses to cover situations where it is too dangerous for SingPost to render its services, reported The Straits Times.
ST had queried SingPost on whether it can manually change the delivery status codes to DF for parcels bound for cities where the situation is too dangerous or expensive for delivery, without first attempting to deliver them.
A SingPost spokesman said that “this is not a case of seeking deliveries in challenging conditions where they cannot be done”.
It added that the practice of falsified manual DF entries was made “even in non-conflict countries” and such practices are not in accordance with the company’s standard processes regarding status updates for deliveries.
Shares of SingPost were trading 1.9 per cent or S$0.01 higher at S$0.54 before the mid-day trading break on Thursday.
