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SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 14 September 2026 – WRITERS AT WORK, a Singapore English writing and enrichment provider recognised on the SME500 Singapore 2025 list, will introduce updates to its Primary Writing Programme, formerly the Pure Composition Writing Programme, across its seven centres in Singapore from 2 January 2027, as part of a wider curriculum refresh designed to help students sustain focused, independent thinking in an increasingly fast-paced learning environment.

Built for How Students Think Today

WRITERS AT WORK updates its curriculum annually in response to shifts in Singapore’s English examination and education landscape. The 2027 update also responds to how students today process language, sustain focus, and construct ideas, shaped by their environment, technology, and culture. As attention spans shorten in a faster, more visually driven world, the ability to sit with a difficult question and think it through has become more valuable. The renamed Primary Writing Programme reflects this shift, still anchored in composition instruction but built around how students actually develop writing competency today.

Three Updates to the Primary Writing Programme

Three updates anchor the programme. Under Flexible Writing Practice, students complete guided or independent compositions depending on lesson objectives, with the STORYBANKING® method recalibrated to sharpen critical thinking through adjusted pacing and difficulty. This gradual release of support, from guided modelling to independent application, meets students at different levels of readiness: those who need more guidance receive clearer structure, while more confident writers are pushed to transfer their learning independently and make more sophisticated writing choices.

The update also responds to a reality of how students learn today: with model compositions and ready-made phrases widely accessible, that accessibility is not itself the concern. The risk is students learning techniques without learning to think. Primary Writing Programme lessons are designed to keep that thinking process intact and complete within the lesson, so students build the ability to reason through difficult questions themselves, rather than simply recall a technique.

Selected modules also integrate bite-sized situational writing, oral, and listening comprehension practice alongside composition, giving students regular, low-stakes exposure to other examination components while reinforcing skills they have already built. The STORYBANKING® programme has also been expanded with material tied to current experiences and trends, building on rather than replacing existing content.

A Refresh for the Comprehensive English Programme

The Comprehensive English Programme, covering Primary and Secondary levels, is also being updated, with a focus on strengthening students’ ability to analyse questions and organise ideas. Existing scaffolding within the programme is being broken down further to make the thinking process more visible and explicit to students.

“The updates are not a departure from what has worked. They are a deliberate response to how our students engage with the world today,” said Jemmies Siew, Managing Director and Curriculum Director at WRITERS AT WORK. “Our aim is for students to leave each lesson still knowing how to think through a hard question themselves, not just recall a technique.”

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Writers At Work

WRITERS AT WORK is a Singapore English writing and enrichment provider founded in 2012. Its curriculum is built around a structured, results-oriented approach and a proprietary methodology called STORYBANKING®, and has expanded to include writing, comprehension, and oral communication instruction for Primary and Secondary levels across seven centres in Singapore. The company was recognised on the SME500 Singapore 2025 list and has a 14-year track record of students achieving full marks in composition and oral examinations.

The product, unveiled at Global Fintech Fest 2026, combines machine-learning risk assessment, dynamic authentication and protection against eligible fraud chargebacks. PayU said the system evaluates cross-border card payments using transaction and behavioural signals, then determines how much authentication each payment requires.

Low-risk transactions can pass with less friction, while payments assessed as higher risk are routed through stronger authentication checks. The approach is intended to address a persistent problem in online commerce: controls that are too strict can reject legitimate customers, while weaker screening can expose merchants to fraud and chargeback losses.

PayU said merchants using the technology have recorded an improvement of about 4% to 5% in international card payment success rates while reducing fraud exposure. The figures are company data and were not independently audited in the announcement.

One online travel merchant using Fraud Liability Protect achieved a 14% rise in payment success rates and an 83% reduction in its fraud-to-sales ratio, according to PayU. The company did not identify that merchant or disclose the transaction volume, testing period or baseline behind those percentages.

Manas Mishra, chief product officer at PayU and Wibmo, said fraud controls should not undermine payment acceptance as merchants expand across markets. He said the product was designed to distinguish genuine and risky international transactions and to protect businesses against both human-initiated and AI-enabled fraud.

The liability element is significant because chargebacks can transfer the financial cost of disputed card transactions back to merchants. PayU’s own documentation describes a chargeback as a transaction reversal following a successful customer dispute. Under its fraud-liability programme, cases classified as covered fraud can be closed with PayU bearing the chargeback amount, subject to applicable terms and eligibility.

Fraud Liability Protect is integrated with PayU Checkout and is being positioned mainly for small and medium-sized businesses in travel, online travel agencies, airlines, e-commerce, quick commerce and food technology. These sectors can face direct revenue pressure when overseas cards are declined or fraudulent transactions later result in disputes.

Zomato is among the businesses using the service, PayU said. The food delivery platform is applying the system to international card transactions so lower-risk payments can proceed with fewer obstacles while higher-risk transactions remain subject to additional controls.

The product also seeks to reduce so-called false positives, where legitimate purchases are blocked because conventional controls treat them as suspicious. That can be especially costly for merchants serving customers abroad, where differences in card issuance, geography and spending behaviour may raise risk scores even when a transaction is genuine during automated screening.

The launch comes as payment providers increasingly use machine learning to balance fraud prevention with checkout conversion. Card-not-present payments create particular challenges because merchants cannot physically verify the card or cardholder, making transaction data, device information, behaviour patterns and authentication signals more important to risk decisions.

PayU already uses automated risk controls across its payment infrastructure. Its published security material says machine-learning models and real-time monitoring are used to identify potentially fraudulent transactions and abnormal patterns. The new service extends that approach by linking risk scoring directly with variable authentication and an explicit chargeback-protection layer for qualifying international card transactions.

PayU’s international payment gateway supports cards issued overseas and allows merchants to offer multiple currencies, while settlement to participating merchants is made in rupees under its terms. The company also offers 3-D Secure-based controls for international card processing, which are designed to add cardholder authentication when required.

The distinction between authentication and liability remains important. A transaction that passes authentication is not automatically immune from every dispute, and chargeback outcomes depend on card-network rules, reason codes and the conditions attached to the merchant’s payment arrangement. PayU’s documentation requires merchants to respond to chargeback notices within specified deadlines where a dispute requires documentation.

The decision was conveyed in a letter dated September 11 after the central bank considered Tata Sons’ March 28, 2024 application and subsequent correspondence, people familiar with the matter said. The RBI advised the company to take the steps needed to comply fully with requirements applying to upper-layer NBFCs.

Tata Sons had sought to give up its Certificate of Registration after reducing debt and arguing that it could operate as an unregistered core investment company. Approval would have removed the principal regulatory basis for a compulsory market listing and allowed the company to remain privately held.

The rejection closes that route. RBI rules require an NBFC classified in the upper layer to list within three years of identification and subject it to tighter standards covering capital, governance, disclosures and risk management. Tata Sons was first placed in the upper layer in September 2022, making its original listing deadline September 2025.

The company remained unlisted while its deregistration request was under examination. When the RBI published its upper-layer list for 2024-25 in January 2025, it retained Tata Sons as a core investment company but said the inclusion was without prejudice to the outcome of the pending application.

The central bank subsequently revised its scale-based framework. Under the current approach, very large NBFCs face enhanced supervision, with an asset threshold of ₹1 trillion among the key criteria. Tata Sons’ standalone assets were about ₹1.75 trillion at the end of March 2025, placing it comfortably above that level. More recent accounts cited in corporate filings and regulatory discussions put the asset base above ₹2 trillion.

The company had repaid more than ₹200 billion of borrowings before seeking deregistration, a step intended to eliminate reliance on public funds, but the regulatory framework also considers circumstances in which access to funding may arise through group entities.

RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said in August that entities meeting the applicable criteria continued to fall within their respective regulatory layers. At that stage, Tata Sons’ application to surrender its core investment company registration had not been decided.

The latest communication therefore resolves the central regulatory question that had kept the company’s listing status uncertain. It does not, by itself, set out the structure, timing or size of any share sale, and Tata Sons has not publicly announced an IPO plan following the RBI decision.

A listing would have significant consequences for the ownership of Tata Sons, which sits at the centre of a group spanning technology, automobiles, steel, consumer businesses, airlines and financial services. Tata Trusts collectively hold roughly two-thirds of the company, giving the philanthropic trusts decisive influence over the holding company.

The Shapoorji Pallonji Group is the largest minority shareholder, with an interest of about 18 per cent. A market listing has long been important to the shareholder because it could create a transparent route for monetising part of that holding, while sections of Tata’s controlling shareholder base have favoured keeping Tata Sons private.

The regulatory decision arrives as Tata Sons is also dealing with leadership uncertainty. Chairman N Chandrasekaran has said he will not seek another term when his current tenure ends in February 2027, adding another major governance issue for the board and shareholders to address.

Tata Sons controls or holds substantial stakes in several listed companies, including Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors and Tata Steel, while also overseeing unlisted businesses. Its position as the group’s principal holding company means any listing would require extensive work on disclosures, capital structure, shareholder arrangements and regulatory compliance.

By R Suryamurthy The latest BRICS financial agenda is ambitious enough to suggest that the grouping is no longer content merely to complain about the inequities of the global economic order; it wants to build pieces of an alternative. But ambition, particularly in a grouping as diverse as BRICS, is cheap. The harder question is […]

The article Brics has a financial roadmap: The hard part is making it work appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

The talks, held on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, focused on bilateral relations and the regional security situation. India’s Prime Minister reiterated that disputes should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy and called for sustained efforts to secure lasting peace and stability, according to an official statement issued after the meeting.

Modi specifically highlighted the need to safeguard freedom of navigation and commerce and the safety and well-being of seafarers. The issue has become a central concern for New Delhi as attacks on commercial vessels and disruption to maritime routes in the region have affected trade and put crews at risk.

The meeting was Modi and Pezeshkian’s second in less than two weeks. They had met on August 31 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek, where Modi also raised the protection of commercial shipping and seafarers and urged a diplomatic approach to the West Asia conflict.

Friday’s discussion came as the conflict involving Iran, the United States and Israel continued to place pressure on strategic waterways and supply routes. India has sought to maintain working relations with Iran while also preserving close ties with Israel and Arab states, making maritime security and regional stability important economic as well as diplomatic priorities.

At least 10 nationals of India have been killed in attacks on vessels transiting the region during the conflict. New Delhi has condemned attacks affecting Gulf countries, energy infrastructure and commercial shipping, while repeatedly calling for de-escalation and protection of civilians and maritime workers.

The maritime threat has sharpened concerns over energy shipments through Gulf waters that remain critical to India’s oil and gas imports.

Modi reinforced the same message earlier on Friday at the BRICS Business Forum, saying global trade could advance only when sea lanes were secure, supply routes remained open and seafarers were safe. He described India as a firm supporter of freedom of navigation and the safety of maritime crews.

Pezeshkian, who was making his first visit to India as president, used his participation in BRICS meetings to press for stronger economic cooperation among members and protection of legitimate trade from political and military pressure. He argued that the grouping’s strength would be demonstrated by converting economic capacity into functioning networks for trade, investment and joint financing.

The Iranian president also called for greater use of national currencies in trade among BRICS members and said Tehran was prepared to work as a strategic partner in energy and transport supply chains. His remarks reflected Iran’s effort to reduce exposure to sanctions and other constraints on cross-border commerce.

During the bilateral meeting, Modi thanked Iran for maintaining high-level participation in BRICS-related meetings despite difficult circumstances. He said the grouping could strengthen resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability among countries of the Global South.

The two leaders also reviewed broader bilateral ties and cooperation in multilateral organisations. Modi welcomed continuing coordination on issues of mutual interest within BRICS, where Iran is a full member alongside Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and other states that have joined the expanded grouping.

The talks followed Pezeshkian’s participation in the Leaders’ Session of the BRICS Business Forum. Modi thanked him for attending and said engagement between the two countries should continue across bilateral and multilateral channels.

The New Delhi meeting also built on the August 31 discussions in Bishkek, when Pezeshkian told Modi that Tehran favoured a negotiated solution to its confrontation with the United States. Modi at that meeting expressed concern over escalating tensions and said civilians, civilian infrastructure, commercial shipping and seafarers should not be harmed.