As with government service, the prospects of everyone differs and is generally as such:
1) Top Tier -
MAS / Presidents' Scholar (who transfer from other ministries)
2) Second Tier - First Class Honors Fresh Grad who join
MAS direct from School
3) Third Tier - Other Second Class Honors Fresh Grad who join
MAS direct from School
4) Bottom Tier - Mid Careers
The tiers shown above generally shows a person's "potential" which have a direct relationship to your promotion, opportunities, bonus and pay. The difference between the bonus between the top tier and the bottom tier can be significant - i.e. at least 2.5 months difference.
While they purport to be competitive in terms of pay and benefits and perform yearly benchmark exercises, do note that they generally benchmark against support functions such as Operations and HR salaries in banks. The benchmark exercises do not include the money makers such as front office (which make sense since not all
MAS officers are money makers), and not even risk management functions such as internal audit or compliance (this does not make sense however).
Perks wise - The flexibility to take no pay leave is unrivaled. Best for mothers who wish to have such flexibility.