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Tag: DBS

  • DBS Acquires 40,000 Clients in Hyderabad

    DBS Acquires 40,000 Clients in Hyderabad

    Singapore bank DBS acquired 40,000 clients in Hyderabad after just opening its office earlier this year with plans to accelerate growth through new customer touchpoints.

    After launching just six months ago, clients from the Hyderabad now make up for 30 percent of DBS India’s customer base. When compared to other geographies in the Indian market, Hyderabad’s new accounts boasted especially high balances with a quarter of its wealth management clients being non-resident Indians.

    We will continue to invest where we believe the market provides an opportunity,» said Priyashis Das, head branch banking & wealth management, consumer banking, India, in a local media report. Hyderabad has a great opportunity for us.

    Moving forward, DBS will seek to further its growth in Hyderabad with plans to establish 100 customer touch points in the next 12 to 18 months through a combination of branches and e-kiosks across 25 cities. In addition to direct client acquisition, DBS will also invest in improving client experience by opening an experience center in local hub Waverock.

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  • OCBC and DBS Provide Green Loans for Singapore Developer

    OCBC and DBS Provide Green Loans for Singapore Developer

    Singapore developer Tiong Seng has secured S$125 million of green loans and performance-linked facilitates from OCBC and DBS, respectively.

    OCBC and DBS provided around $51.4 million and $40.4 million, respectively, according to a regulatory filing.

    The OCBC loan will be used exclusively on green projects with «clear environmental benefits» such as certified green buildings and projects that improve resource efficiency or generate renewable energy.

    The DBS loan will include environmental performance-linked benefits including interest rate and performance bond commission discounts if certain predetermined targets are exceeded. Review and validation will be conducted by an external independent party at the end of each 1-year period.

    Apart from diversifying our sources of funding, these facilities will allow us to focus on our environmental and green objectives to make a positive difference in our society, said Tiong Seng Holdings chief executive.

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  • DBS Partners with Exiger to Fight Financial Crime

    DBS Partners with Exiger to Fight Financial Crime

    To fend off the evolving risks of financial crime, DBS Bank has partnered with Exiger, a provider of risk and compliance solutions to implement a due diligence solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline and further bolster the bank’s screening processes.

    DBS will be tapping on DDIQ, the automated AI-powered solution designed by Exiger that understands and analyses content with cognitive reasoning. The solution accelerates and enhances risk assessments of clients, investments, transactions, third parties, and counterparties.

    Using AI to help manage risk in financial crime is a journey that involves many small, difficult steps but tremendous ambition and commitment to keep moving.  It is incumbent for financial institutions and their like-minded partners to continue to strive to give customers great experiences yet be adversarial to criminals and terrorists,» said Lam Chee Kin, Managing Director and Head, Group Legal, Compliance and Secretariat at DBS Bank in a media statement on Friday.

    Findings from each level of risk assessment are recorded in Exiger’s platform in a transparent and concise manner to ease the process of manually extracting and collating data for audit, compliance, and regulatory purposes.

    Banks are quickly recognizing that legacy systems and legacy technology will hold them back from achieving the next phase of growth and meeting increasingly demanding regulatory compliance requirements. DBS is cutting the path for traditional financial institutions to transform and compete in today’s digital market, commented Brandon Daniels, President of Global Technology Markets at Exiger.

    Exiger has developed purpose-built technology – DDIQ and Insight 3PM – to accelerate the suitability, efficiency, quality and cost-effectiveness of clients’ compliance operations. Exiger operates in six countries and eight cities around the world, including London, New York City, the Washington, D.C. metro area, Toronto, Vancouver, Bucharest, Hong Kong and Singapore.

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  • DBS Avoids Larger M&A Deals

    DBS Avoids Larger M&A Deals

    DBS group chief executive Piyush Gupta said it would avoid acquisition targets with large deal sizes in order to maintain concentrated focus on its digital transformation.

    According to Gupta, the bank would target deals valued at about five percent of DBS’s market cap (around $3.7 billion as of publishing) and avoid larger ones in order to focus on a digital market he calls «the battleground of the future».

    The general thesis for us is that we still think that the digital transformation requires energy and bandwidth,» he explained. If I did a bigger deal and I wound up saying that I’m going to lose two years’ worth of tech work that would be quite a cost to pay.

    Piyush reiterated that the bank remained open to acquisitions but noted that the size preference was due a successful track record of «very quick returns» via digital integration, referencing the bank’s $81 million purchase of ANZ’s Asian wealth and retail business in 2016.

    We realized that if you get a core customer base at a sensible price, and then overlay our digital capabilities and tools on top of that, it can actually be very accretive, very quickly,» Gupta said. «So we are open to exploring those, but again, it’s a fine call. When does it become too big – one that is going to subsume everything else?

    One such financial institution which may qualify for the bank’s taste is Indonesia’s Bank Permata, valued at around $2.7 billion, in which DBS has reportedly expressed interest. Currently, Japan’s SMFG and Singaporean rival OCBC are believed to be frontrunners for the medium-sized lender.

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  • DBS and OCBC Collaborate With Google Pay

    DBS and OCBC Collaborate With Google Pay

    DBS and OCBC account holders without credit cards can soon use Google Pay to make payments to merchants in Singapore.

    The integration will allow both banks’ customers to send and receive funds and also pay merchants via Google Pay using a single-click sign-up.

    We believe that integrating Google Pay with our DBS PayLah! the platform will deliver greater convenience to consumers as they will have more options to transfer funds and make instant payments to some 80,000 merchants in Singapore, said Han Kwee Juan, Chief Strategy Officer at DBS Bank in a media statement.

    The U.S. technology giant on Monday demonstrated a preview of Google Pay in Singapore at the Singapore Fintech Festival 2019, promising features of simplicity, security and helpfulness for users. It taps on conversations of users to create suggestions and also tokenized cards within Google Pay.

    The new service is being tested early next year with the aim of rolling it out in full later in the year, said Hannia Zia, product manager of Google Pay during the preview at the festival. The collaboration includes the integration of both peer-to-peer (P2P) and peer-to-merchant (P2M) transaction services.

    As Google Pay is tapping onto Funds Transfer Services PayNow, customers of nine banks on the payment infrastructure may also enjoy Google Pay later. PayNow allows users in Singapore to make and receive payments from their bank accounts using their mobile or identification number.

    The potential of Google Pay leveraging PayNow is tremendous and will provide our customers with the benefits of secure, seamless and ubiquitous payments without having a wallet. Both OCBC and Google share the same customer-centric approach to enabling seamless digital payments – an open-loop payments ecosystem, said Ching Wei Hong, Chief Operating Officer at OCBC Bank in a media statement.

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  • DBS Launches Virtual Wealth Manager With Celebrities

    DBS Launches Virtual Wealth Manager With Celebrities

    DBS introduced its fully virtual wealth management capabilities in Hong Kong in grand fashion, accompanying the launch with renowned local celebrities.

    The bank recently launched its new virtual wealth manager which can enable users to undergo the entire experience digitally from account-opening to transacting. The suite of capabilities also includes general banking, investments, FX trading, remittance and others.

    We are the first bank that has a fully digitized journey from onboarding to all wealth management products, said Sebastian Paredes, DBS Hong Kong CEO. This is not an app. This is the launch of a new virtual bank.

    Then DBS began its planning exercise two years ago to launch the virtual solution, it wanted to significantly reduce the time required to open accounts, after repeatedly hearing clients express how busy they are and how laborious it is to fill out application forms.

    This is something on our mind for a long time,» explained Ajay Mathur, managing director and head of consumer bank gin and wealth management, DBS. With this fully virtual wealth management account onboarding, you can open an account in just a few minutes.

    Joined by renowned local celebrities, Louis Koo Tin-lok and Jessica Hsuan, the bank made a live demonstration to showcase the ease of opening an account. In addition to mandatory documents, the system was able to use facial recognition technology to verify the user simply by matching an image of an official ID and a selfie image.

  • DBS Inks Fintech Degree MoU with Chinese University of Hong Kong

    DBS Inks Fintech Degree MoU with Chinese University of Hong Kong

    DBS signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the inaugural fintech masters degree to further innovation and academic strength in the emerging field.

    The MoU was signed by Martin Wong, the university’s dean of engineering, and Brit Blakeney, DBS Hong Kong’s head of innovation & ecosystems. In addition to expressing commitment, students will gain first-hand experience in fintech projects including «digital customer journey, API application, big data analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and sustainability» alongside internship opportunities and sharing sessions from DBS Hong Kong mentors.

    Our MSc FinTech program is committed to nurturing technologically adept and business savvy talents who can offer innovative solutions to finance-related industries, Wong said. This collaboration is beneficial to both sides as we firmly believe that extending and strengthening academic and corporate relationships is crucial to the development of financial technologists.

    Banks can no longer work in silos and can only be successful by materially transforming the way they work and by collaborating with fintechs, Blakeney added, highlighting the bank’s commitment to talent development in Hong Kong.

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  • DBS Chief First Singaporean Among World’s Top CEO

    DBS Chief First Singaporean Among World’s Top CEO

    Harvard Business Review has named DBS CEO Piyush Gupta in their 2019 edition of The CEO 100, its annual list of the world’s top chief executives.

    DBS’ chief executive Piyush Gupta is in Havard Business Review’s 2019 edition of The CEO 100,  joining the likes of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Disney’s Robert Iger and Tencent’s Ma Huateng in the list this year. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang takes pole position on the list.

    Piyush Gupta’s leadership, together with a committed management team, has been critical in reshaping the bank. Over the years, he has shown us time and time again what an outstanding chief executive he is – his vision, courage and tenacity, and most importantly, his steadfastness in wanting to do the right thing by our people and our communities. Being the first Singapore CEO to be featured on this list, Gupta has done us all proud by flying the Singapore flag high on the global stage once more, said DBS Chairman Peter Seah, in a media statement on Tuesday.

    The ranking is based not only on financial performance but also on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings, according to HBR. This year, ESG scores have been weighted to account for 30 percent of each CEO’s final ranking – up from 20 percent in 2018, to reflect  «the fact that a rapidly growing number of funds and individuals now focus on far more than bottom-line metrics when they make investment decisions». In addition, HBR’s rankings rely on «objective measures over a chief executive’s entire tenure», it said.

    Piyush joined DBS in 2009 as CEO and has since led the bank on a transformation journey that has established the organization as being among the world’s best. In September 2019, DBS was featured in HBR as among the world’s top 10 companies that have made the most successful strategic transformations in the last decade. This year, DBS has also been recognized by Euromoney as the World’s Best Bank.

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  • DBS Leverages Allfunds Platform

    DBS Leverages Allfunds Platform

    DBS inks an agreement with Allfunds to leverage its fund distribution capabilities and boost penetration in Asia.

    DBS’s retail banking and wealth management arm will look to leverage from the partnership «access to a broad range of investment funds and utilize the asset servicing services which Allfunds provides in Asia, and globally,» according to a statement.

    According to Allfunds’ Asia regional manager David Perez de Albeniz, the partnership marks a common goal towards increasing mutual funds penetration in Asia, highlighting potential synergies between DBS’s «innovative digital offering» and Allfunds’ open-architecture platform. Marc Lansonneur, head of managed solutions, balance sheet products and investment governance at DBS Wealth, echoed the sentiments and underlined the comprehensiveness of the Allfunds platform.

    Allfunds presents a one-stop solution for our distribution needs – access to an extensive fund eco-system, leading technology proposition, and a full suite of servicing capabilities – which we seek to leverage to achieve greater convenience, efficiency, and productivity moving forward, Lansonneur said.

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  • DBS Mulls Second Attempt at Indonesian Bank M&A

    DBS Mulls Second Attempt at Indonesian Bank M&A

    Considerations are being made at DBS on whether or not to submit a bid for Indonesian lender Bank Permata – its second attempt to enter the Southeast Asian market through an acquisition.

    DBS has not yet concluded its decision on whether or not to bid for the bank valued at $2.4 billion, according to a report citing anonymous sources. The submission deadline is believed to be due in about a month.

    Should it decide to pursue the acquisition, DBS will face competition from OCBC and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. Bank Permata’s current major shareholders include Standard Chartered (45 percent) and PT Astra International (45 percent).

    Should DBS proceed, it will mark the second attempt at acquiring a major Indonesian bank. In 2013, DBS failed to acquire PT Bank Danamon Indonesia with its $6.5 billion bid following a change to foreign ownership rules. The Indonesian lender was subsequently acquired by Mitsubishi UFJ earlier this year.

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  • DBS Mulls Second Attempt at Indonesian Bank M&A

    DBS Mulls Second Attempt at Indonesian Bank M&A

    Considerations are being made at DBS on whether or not to submit a bid for Indonesian lender Bank Permata – its second attempt to enter the Southeast Asian market through an acquisition.

    DBS has not yet concluded its decision on whether or not to bid for the bank valued at $2.4 billion, according to a report citing anonymous sources. The submission deadline is believed to be due in about a month.

    Should it decide to pursue the acquisition, DBS will face competition from OCBC and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. Bank Permata’s current major shareholders include Standard Chartered (45 percent) and PT Astra International (45 percent).

    Should DBS proceed, it will mark the second attempt at acquiring a major Indonesian bank. In 2013, DBS failed to acquire PT Bank Danamon Indonesia with its $6.5 billion bid following a change to foreign ownership rules. The Indonesian lender was subsequently acquired by Mitsubishi UFJ earlier this year.

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  • DBS to Expand E-Wallet Functionalities

    DBS to Expand E-Wallet Functionalities

    To mark the e-wallet’s fifth anniversary, DBS announced new functionalities and merchant deals and said it hopes to grow its user base.

    BS Bank wants to grow its PayLah e-wallet user base from 1.6 million users currently to 3.5 million users by 2023, and will roll out new functionalities and improve the user experience, the bank said in a statement on Wednesday.

    From next year, the bank will integrate its rewards app, as well as debit and credit cards payments to the PayLah platform, expand payment touchpoints across the region, and increase ecosystem partnerships, the statement said, highlighting strategic platform partnerships with merchants like KFC, SISTIC and AXS.

    «In 2020, we’ll be building on the three Ps – Payments, Partners and Platform – as part of a longer-term strategic roadmap. By linking DBS/POSB debit and credit cards and integrating the DBS Lifestyle rewards app into DBS PayLah!, our customers will be able to earn and redeem rewards instantly on a single platform simply and seamlessly, regardless of their mode of payment,» Anthony Seow, DBS head of Payments & Platforms, Consumer Banking Group (Singapore), said.

    Introduced in 2014, PayLah allows users to make instant peer-to-peer fund transfers, purchase travel insurance, movie tickets, pay bills and transport expenses and pay for their purchases at more than 80,000 NETS QR, SGQR and PayNow QR-enabled merchants. The app was the first in Singapore to allow users to send and receive funds using QR codes.

    According to DBS, its 1.6 million e-wallet users made S$1.5 billion ($1.09 billion) in transactions from August 2018 to September 2019.

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  • DBS Expands Transaction Banking

    DBS Expands Transaction Banking

    As trade flows around Asia are reconfigured amid an ongoing trade war, the bank is seeing brisk business in growth markets, and plans to grow its global transaction services business there.

    DBS is on track to achieve its five-year target of quadrupling its cash management business by 2020, one year ahead of time, said John Laurens, the bank’s group head of global transaction services (GTS) said.

    According to Laurens, China’s slowing economic growth and falling commodity prices have resulted in trade finance having a lower share of trade finance revenues – going from 70 percent to 30 percent in the past five years. However, cash management has conversely become the business’ main growth driver, now contributing to 70 percent of revenue, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39 percent from 2015 to 2018.

    Overall, revenue for DBS’ global transaction banking business grew from S$1.59 billion ($1.16 billion) to S$2.45 billion during the same period, a CAGR of 15 percent.

    Laurens said the bank has plans to grow its GTS revenue in Vietnam and the Greater Bay Area by 30 percent and 55 percent respectively over the next five years, and will also ramp up its digital capabilities by tripling its tech investments in cash management solutions in Vietnam.

    Transaction banking will become one of the most fast-moving, technologically advanced aspect of banking – this is a good place to be, he said.

  • DBS Vickers Remisiers to Move to UOB Kay Hian

    DBS Vickers Remisiers to Move to UOB Kay Hian

    Following months of discussions between the two banks over the transfer of the trading representatives, about 100 remisiers from DBS Vickers will join UOB Kay Hian.

    DBS Vickers has agreed to transfer its offline retail securities brokerage business to UOB Kay Hian by October 28, 2019, following months-long negotiations. With the move, over 100 remisiers will move to UOB Kay Hian, making it the largest securities brokerage in Singapore, with over 800 dealers and remisiers.

    This allows us to scale and do a lot of business. With this acquisition, we will have 25 percent of the retail market share in Singapore. Now, we are 20-21 percent,» UOB Kay Hian senior executive director Esmond Choo said.

    DBS had searched for a buyer that would take its remisiers as a group. UOB Kay Hian was chosen as it was «the most sincere and best suited to adopt the group,» the newspaper said, with Choo pointing out that the remisier base advisory model to the firm, and the fact that it had grown through mergers and acquisitions since early 2000.

    Not all remisiers will move to UOB – some are taking the chance to retire, while others have joined other brokerages. A few have taken on new roles like relationship managers and investment counselors at DBS.

    We previously reported that UOB Kay Hian was in talks with DBS to hire about 15o remisiers and retail equity trading representatives from DBS Vickers, the bank’s broking arm, who were affected by its revamp to better focus on institutional clients. RHB, CGS CIMB and PhillipCapital were also said to be interested in hiring the affected individuals.

    This followed plans by DBS to merge its retail equity trading under DBS Vickers with the bank amid falling trade volumes from retail participants and downward pressure on brokerage commissions.

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  • DBS Announces Integrated Wealth Management

    DBS Announces Integrated Wealth Management

    The bank hopes to serve the country’s growing high net worth demographic with its one-bank proposition, which provides access to offerings across wealth management, retail, investment and corporate banking.

    DBS Private Bank and DBS Vickers Securities (Thailand) have announced a partnership to provide a «one-stop» onshore and offshore wealth proposition in Thailand, allowing the country’s growing high net worth demographic to access offerings across wealth management, retail, investment and corporate banking from a single point of contact.

    To support this push, the bank aims to double its number of relationship managers in Thailand by 2023, and also hopes to double its assets under management to S$8 billion ($5.82 billion) during this period, DBS said in a statement published on Wednesday.

    We believe the Thai wealth market holds immense potential, having witnessed Thai investors’ growing sophistication and receptiveness to investment ideas, and the Bank of Thailand’s encouraging regulatory stance towards offshore investments, Sim S Lim, wealth management and consumer banking group head, said in the statement.

    Family-owned businesses drive much of the country’s economy, accounting for 80 percent of Thailand’s GDP and over one-third of listed firms on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, DBS said, citing PwC research.