Recently, I went to open a business account with a local established bank. I was served by a Business Banking Manager, a fresh graduate, who had worked for the bank for just 4 months! He had a finance degree from SIM.
Ok, this bank, as far as I know, is not owned even partially by the Spore govt, although its leaders have ties with the ruling elite. I’m also not sure which finance degree he obtained, as in which was the awarding university (SIM is not a university; pls don’t confuse SIM with UniSIM).
Thus the finance degree he obtained is most likely an external degree. My point is, you may still get employed by an established company if you have not graduated from any of the local universities, such as NUS, NTU, SMU or SUTD. It could well be that the finance or banking industry has its own list of recognised university degrees, such as the nursing or hospitality industries, and these degrees may even be external or distance-learning degrees.
Thus if you are interested in a particular industry, you’d need to find out which are the universities recognised by the big names in that industry.