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DBS CEO Piyush Gupta is unsackable
- Thread starter LITTLEREDDOT
- Start date
He is also unbeatable like me! 
MAS tells DBS, Citibank to investigate disruption; will take appropriate actions after
Customers of both banks were unable to use their online and mobile services during the recent disruption, which began last Saturday afternoon. ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
Ian Cheng
Correspondent
Oct 19, 2023
SINGAPORE – The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has instructed DBS Bank and Citibank to investigate their failure to fully recover their systems within its required timeframe during last Saturday’s service disruption.
The authority would then take “appropriate supervisory actions after gathering the necessary facts”, it said on Thursday in response to media queries.
Customers of both banks were unable to use their online and mobile services during the recent disruption, which began last Saturday afternoon.
“MAS requires all banks to ensure that their critical systems and services to customers are resilient to disruption,” said an MAS spokesman.
“Banks are required to have in place back-up data centres and systems, and test them periodically to ensure that critical systems and services can be restored within four hours following an outage. In addition, the unscheduled downtime for a critical system affecting a bank’s operations or service to customers must not exceed four hours within any 12-month period.”
MAS added that it does not have oversight of data centres. Instead, it expects banks to establish contractual agreements with data centre providers that include the authority’s requirements on system availability.
The authority acknowledged that both DBS and Citibank had activated their backup data centres when their primary data centres malfunctioned last Saturday.
However, the banks did not fully recover their systems within the required timeframe, it added.
It reminded the public that no IT system is infallible, and that banks and customers should have backup plans for service disruptions caused by IT disruptions.
“The banks activated contingency measures, such as extension of branch hours and alternative arrangements for credit card transactions, to reduce the impact on customers,” said MAS.
“Customers can benefit from having alternative payment providers and carrying some cash as a contingency. During this recent service disruption, many affected customers with alternative payment providers were able to switch to those or to using cash, minimising inconvenience.”
MAS full of talk ...always give the bank a slap on the wrist. MAS does NOT protect the consumers.
What is the race of MAS CEO?
PayLah! down for some users, less than a week after DBS banking services were disrupted
DBS said that access to PayLah! was intermittent. PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
Fatimah Mujibah
Oct 20, 2023
SINGAPORE – Following an outage that lasted more than 12 hours over the weekend, DBS Bank faced another hiccup on Friday morning with customers unable to access online service PayLah!.
In a Facebook post at around 10am, DBS said that access to PayLah! was intermittent. The bank advised its customers to use DBS digibank Scan and Pay, or DBS/POSB debit or credit cards for their payments.
The bank said that those who are able to access PayLah! and are eligible for the DBS 5 Million Hawker Meals cashback will receive their rebate by Friday.
The cashback is an initiative by DBS introduced in February to support hawkers. The $3 discount is available every Friday for the first 100,000 users on their hawker meals islandwide.
“We are resolving the issue. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and seek your understanding,” DBS said.
The Straits Times understands that ATM machines are unaffected.
The Downdetector website, which tracks service disruptions, saw an increase in complaints about DBS at 7.45am.
At about 9am, there were about 397 reports from DBS customers on the website.
A Facebook user named Jerome Fs commented: “Can’t even log in (using) the app. People are waiting for me to make payment while queuing. You know how embarrassing it is? How can we ‘go cashless’ when our technology cannot keep it up?”
Several users also commented on the frequent issues faced by DBS and expressed their disappointment.
The disruption to PayLah! comes after physical ATMs, website and cards were down last Saturday afternoon. All of its banking services resumed on Sunday morning.
DBS said its investigations showed that the service disruption was caused by an issue at a data centre, which is also used by other organisations.
ST has contacted DBS for comment.
Quote: "DBS’s revenue surged from S$9.6 billion in 2014, the year it launched its digital transformation, to S$14.6 billion last year (2020)."
That's why Piyush is unsackable. He takes all the credit for making so much money for Temasek.
Vinika D. Rao , INSEAD, and Robin Speculand , Bridges Business Consultancy Int.
15 Nov 2021
The Singapore titan’s tech-charged quest to take the banking out of banking has paid off handsomely.
The world’s best bank, it seems, has managed to outdo itself. For the fourth year in a row, Singapore-based DBS Bank has been named the “world's best bank” by Euromoney, a leading industry publication. It also clinched the “world’s best digital bank” accolade, marking the first time the two titles are held by the same institution. While South-east Asia’s largest bank owes its latest triumphs to bold initiatives launched during the pandemic, including new online exchanges for blockchain-based fundraising and carbon credit trading, its ascent to the top is built on a digital transformation years in the making.
That transformation was launched in 2014 by CEO Piyush Gupta and his leadership team. Their vision: Make Banking Joyful. An ambitious goal, considering the industry’s tarnished image after the global financial crisis as well as a growing shift towards online financial transactions. In fact, a survey in the United States showed that 71 percent of millennials would rather go to the dentist than their local bank branch, and three in four preferred financial services from the likes of Google and Amazon.
The threat from tech was impressed upon Gupta during a meeting he had earlier in 2014 with Jack Ma, then CEO of Alibaba. That one-hour meeting convinced Gupta of the disruptive forces emerging from China that would revolutionise banking.
To win over a new generation of customers, DBS saw that it needed to inhabit the same space as the tech upstarts, leveraging new technologies to take the hassle out of traditional banking. In short, it set out to make banking “joyful”. This vision would be built on three strategic principles: become digital to the core, make DBS “invisible”, and create a “30,000 people start-up” culture.
Becoming digital to the core
Part of DBS's success is built on its creativity in overcoming digital transformation challenges that other organisations struggle with. Two out of three digital transformations fail at least in part because executives underestimate the project’s scope and impact. DBS’s top executives decided right from the start that emerging technologies and use of data had to be incorporated throughout the bank, with alignment across all divisions.
The transformation quickly bore fruit. First, DBS dramatically reduced the time-to-market of new products. For example, in 2016 it launched the first digital-only bank in India through a mobile app that it fed with weekly updates. By the following year, the digibank had added more than a million customers.
DBS also built ecosystem partnerships, an essential strategy in a hyper-connected world. Most recently, the bank teamed up with fintech firm Doxa to launch an automated payment solution for Singapore's construction industry, which accounts for 4 percent of the country’s economy. It aims to help contractors improve cash flow management and cut costs by digitising paperwork and tracking payments automatically.
Transformations, however, are never easy. For DBS, an initial challenge was to start solving problems by thinking like “techies” rather than bankers. Its solution? Proclaim itself “a technology company delivering banking services” and benchmarking not against other banks but leading technology companies. To encourage employees to think like techies, and not just any techie but Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s famously customer-focused boss, DBS adopted the phrase, “What would Jeff do?”
It also distilled lessons from leading technology companies with the catchy mnemonic “GANDALF”, after the wizard of The Lord of the Rings fame: G — use open-source software like Google; A — run software on Amazon’s cloud platforms; N — use data and automation at scale and personalise recommendations like Netflix; A — design systems as Apple does; L — push for continuous learning in the footsteps of LinkedIn; and F — focus on building communities like Facebook. What about ‘D’? That’s for DBS, of course.
GANDALF helped inspire a new mindset for DBS’s digital and core technology transformation. The bank identified and adopted five key initiatives:
At DBS, customers come first, followed by employees, then other stakeholders. Gupta believes that putting the customer first provides a unifying purpose for employees. The bank adopted customer journey mapping – a method of visualising the customer’s interaction with the bank from his or her perspective – and made it the default tool for solving customer issues. The bank also used hackathons and design thinking processes to help employees become customer-centric.
In 2017, DBS launched a developer platform of APIs, the software protocol that allows computers and apps to communicate with one another. The platform enables software developers to “communicate” with DBS and link up with the bank’s services, such as a peer-to-peer service payment and mortgage affordability assessments. Today the network has over 1,000 open APIs. For instance, cars can now be bought and sold on the bank’s platform, with DBS car loans integrated seamlessly into the system. The bank becomes “invisible” to its customers while meeting their needs.
Becoming a start-up
A question DBS’s leadership asked early in the bank’s digital transformation was: “What is the biggest roadblock to adopting a start-up culture?” It turned out that it was the way meetings were conducted, a scourge common to many large, complex organisations. There were too many meetings, and too many of them were ineffective or had no stated purpose.
Enter “MOJO”, short for Meeting Owner Joyful Observer, a campaign to do away with meetings that went nowhere. It had a simple rule: Meetings must start and finish on time and have a fixed agenda. MOJO produced serious benefits, saving the bank more than 500,000 employee hours.
To develop a start-up culture, the leadership team cultivated five characteristics throughout the organisation: agility, continuous learning, customer obsession, data-driven experimentation and risk-taking. Last year, as the pandemic raged, the bank created a task force on the future of work. Today, employees have the flexibility to work from home up to 40 percent of the time. For those who need flexible work arrangements, the bank offers a job-sharing scheme that divides a typical full-time job between two employees.
Meanwhile the bank is accelerating its transition from conventional functional departments to project-specific, data-driven agile squads, made up of members from different functions with relevant areas of expertise. Workspaces are also being redesigned.
Along the way to becoming the “world's best bank”, DBS’s revenue surged from S$9.6 billion in 2014, the year it launched its digital transformation, to S$14.6 billion last year. But it is not resting on its laurels. The bank has crafted a new vision: to be a better bank in a better world, focusing on continued digital transformation and sustainability. It aims to deliver products and services that promote sustainable development, to engage in sustainable procurement, support social enterprises and businesses with positive social impact and give back to the communities in which it operates.
Robin Speculand is co-nominated with DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta for the Ideas into Practice Award of Thinkers50, a global ranking of management thinkers published every other year. The Thinkers50 Awards Gala 2021, of which INSEAD is an educational partner.
That's why Piyush is unsackable. He takes all the credit for making so much money for Temasek.
How DBS Became the ‘World’s Best Bank’
Vinika D. Rao , INSEAD, and Robin Speculand , Bridges Business Consultancy Int.
15 Nov 2021
The Singapore titan’s tech-charged quest to take the banking out of banking has paid off handsomely.
The world’s best bank, it seems, has managed to outdo itself. For the fourth year in a row, Singapore-based DBS Bank has been named the “world's best bank” by Euromoney, a leading industry publication. It also clinched the “world’s best digital bank” accolade, marking the first time the two titles are held by the same institution. While South-east Asia’s largest bank owes its latest triumphs to bold initiatives launched during the pandemic, including new online exchanges for blockchain-based fundraising and carbon credit trading, its ascent to the top is built on a digital transformation years in the making.
That transformation was launched in 2014 by CEO Piyush Gupta and his leadership team. Their vision: Make Banking Joyful. An ambitious goal, considering the industry’s tarnished image after the global financial crisis as well as a growing shift towards online financial transactions. In fact, a survey in the United States showed that 71 percent of millennials would rather go to the dentist than their local bank branch, and three in four preferred financial services from the likes of Google and Amazon.
The threat from tech was impressed upon Gupta during a meeting he had earlier in 2014 with Jack Ma, then CEO of Alibaba. That one-hour meeting convinced Gupta of the disruptive forces emerging from China that would revolutionise banking.
To win over a new generation of customers, DBS saw that it needed to inhabit the same space as the tech upstarts, leveraging new technologies to take the hassle out of traditional banking. In short, it set out to make banking “joyful”. This vision would be built on three strategic principles: become digital to the core, make DBS “invisible”, and create a “30,000 people start-up” culture.
Becoming digital to the core
Part of DBS's success is built on its creativity in overcoming digital transformation challenges that other organisations struggle with. Two out of three digital transformations fail at least in part because executives underestimate the project’s scope and impact. DBS’s top executives decided right from the start that emerging technologies and use of data had to be incorporated throughout the bank, with alignment across all divisions.
The transformation quickly bore fruit. First, DBS dramatically reduced the time-to-market of new products. For example, in 2016 it launched the first digital-only bank in India through a mobile app that it fed with weekly updates. By the following year, the digibank had added more than a million customers.
DBS also built ecosystem partnerships, an essential strategy in a hyper-connected world. Most recently, the bank teamed up with fintech firm Doxa to launch an automated payment solution for Singapore's construction industry, which accounts for 4 percent of the country’s economy. It aims to help contractors improve cash flow management and cut costs by digitising paperwork and tracking payments automatically.
Transformations, however, are never easy. For DBS, an initial challenge was to start solving problems by thinking like “techies” rather than bankers. Its solution? Proclaim itself “a technology company delivering banking services” and benchmarking not against other banks but leading technology companies. To encourage employees to think like techies, and not just any techie but Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s famously customer-focused boss, DBS adopted the phrase, “What would Jeff do?”
It also distilled lessons from leading technology companies with the catchy mnemonic “GANDALF”, after the wizard of The Lord of the Rings fame: G — use open-source software like Google; A — run software on Amazon’s cloud platforms; N — use data and automation at scale and personalise recommendations like Netflix; A — design systems as Apple does; L — push for continuous learning in the footsteps of LinkedIn; and F — focus on building communities like Facebook. What about ‘D’? That’s for DBS, of course.
GANDALF helped inspire a new mindset for DBS’s digital and core technology transformation. The bank identified and adopted five key initiatives:
- Shift from products to platform – substitute empowered teams with oversight of their own products for long-term projects replete with steering committees and bureaucracy
- Develop high-performing agile teams – in pre-transformation DBS, business departments set the goals and technology played a supporting role. Now, both sides come to the table as equal partners with shared goals and plans
- Automate everything – build, test and deploy systems faster
- Design for modern systems – engineer technologies and build systems that are scalable, elastic and ready for experimentation by using the cloud
- Organise for success – provide employees with the right tools and support to enable agility
At DBS, customers come first, followed by employees, then other stakeholders. Gupta believes that putting the customer first provides a unifying purpose for employees. The bank adopted customer journey mapping – a method of visualising the customer’s interaction with the bank from his or her perspective – and made it the default tool for solving customer issues. The bank also used hackathons and design thinking processes to help employees become customer-centric.
In 2017, DBS launched a developer platform of APIs, the software protocol that allows computers and apps to communicate with one another. The platform enables software developers to “communicate” with DBS and link up with the bank’s services, such as a peer-to-peer service payment and mortgage affordability assessments. Today the network has over 1,000 open APIs. For instance, cars can now be bought and sold on the bank’s platform, with DBS car loans integrated seamlessly into the system. The bank becomes “invisible” to its customers while meeting their needs.
Becoming a start-up
A question DBS’s leadership asked early in the bank’s digital transformation was: “What is the biggest roadblock to adopting a start-up culture?” It turned out that it was the way meetings were conducted, a scourge common to many large, complex organisations. There were too many meetings, and too many of them were ineffective or had no stated purpose.
Enter “MOJO”, short for Meeting Owner Joyful Observer, a campaign to do away with meetings that went nowhere. It had a simple rule: Meetings must start and finish on time and have a fixed agenda. MOJO produced serious benefits, saving the bank more than 500,000 employee hours.
To develop a start-up culture, the leadership team cultivated five characteristics throughout the organisation: agility, continuous learning, customer obsession, data-driven experimentation and risk-taking. Last year, as the pandemic raged, the bank created a task force on the future of work. Today, employees have the flexibility to work from home up to 40 percent of the time. For those who need flexible work arrangements, the bank offers a job-sharing scheme that divides a typical full-time job between two employees.
Meanwhile the bank is accelerating its transition from conventional functional departments to project-specific, data-driven agile squads, made up of members from different functions with relevant areas of expertise. Workspaces are also being redesigned.
Along the way to becoming the “world's best bank”, DBS’s revenue surged from S$9.6 billion in 2014, the year it launched its digital transformation, to S$14.6 billion last year. But it is not resting on its laurels. The bank has crafted a new vision: to be a better bank in a better world, focusing on continued digital transformation and sustainability. It aims to deliver products and services that promote sustainable development, to engage in sustainable procurement, support social enterprises and businesses with positive social impact and give back to the communities in which it operates.
Robin Speculand is co-nominated with DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta for the Ideas into Practice Award of Thinkers50, a global ranking of management thinkers published every other year. The Thinkers50 Awards Gala 2021, of which INSEAD is an educational partner.
Forum: Consumer-facing digital services should have tiered contingency measures
Oct 24, 2023The latest cases of IT system outages affecting customers of DBS and Citibank (DBS, Citi restoring banking services following disruptions on Saturday; DBS ATMs all up, Oct 15) follow several other incidents of consumer-related IT system disruptions in recent months.
In March and May, DBS was affected by two separate IT incidents resulting in its digital services being inaccessible for more than 16 hours. Also in March, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority encountered a technical glitch which sparked hours-long delays at Singapore’s checkpoints and affected about 85,000 travellers.
While these disruptions could have been caused by various factors, ranging from technical to human-related causes, there is increasing recognition that such outages have a growing economic and social impact on Singapore.
In its Oct 19 statement, the Monetary Authority of Singapore noted that banks should have contingency measures during service disruptions.
I would like to suggest that such contingency measures apply to all consumer-facing digital services, with additional requirements for essential services.
For example, digital services and applications could be tiered based on the number of active users and how critical their applications are, with graduated safeguard requirements. IT systems processing crucial applications should also be audited periodically.
As Singapore is a key data centre and IT services hub in the region, it is important that it establish a robust and resilient digital services framework that will support and enhance the growth of its digital economy.
The participation of different stakeholders, from companies and IT solutions providers to digital infrastructure operators and regulators, will be essential in this process as we take a holistic and balanced approach to the issue.
Tim Lin
| Crushing news for HK bank customers | |||
A bank in Hong Kong has been explaining to customers why it sent 83 security deposit boxes full of valuables to a scrap yard, where they were destroyed. DBS Bank says the mistake happened when one of its branches was refurbished. Contractors working over the weekend were supposed to dump empty ones. Instead they took full ones from the bank's vault. The bank has promised to compensate its customers for losses, but few had told the branch what was in their boxes.
DBS said on Wednesday that all customers would be offered an ex gratia payment of HK$50,000 ($6,400). They will be offered a further two options. A one-off fast track settlement of a further HK$100,000 ($12,800) as a "speedy and simple solution", or customers who prefer to draw up a detailed list of the contents can submit a declaration form. The bank says it will then begin discussions with them on a case-by-case basis. DBS Hong Kong's Head of Consumer Banking, Sunny Cheung, admitted they faced a difficult task establishing exactly what had been destroyed. "This is a very tough situation because at the end, we have to work together with our customers to ascertain the value of the contents inside. It is very hard for us to say at this point in time what will be the amount, so I think we have to reiterate DBS takes ultimate responsibility for this incident and we will honour our obligation to our customers". There is some hope though for those who fear they have lost irreplaceable items. The bank says it has managed to recover some of what was lost. Its officials are combing through what is left of the boxes, carrying out an inventory of what survived the attempts to destroy them. An investigation into what went wrong is under way. |
Mizuho's top executives to resign over system failures
By Makiko Yamazaki and Tetsushi KajimotoNovember 27, 2021
Mizuho's top execs quit over system failures
TOKYO, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Mizuho Financial Group (8411.T) said on Friday its chief, chairman and three other executives will resign as financial authorities reprimanded Japan's No. 3 lender for a series of technical system failures.
The Financial Services Agency (FSA), the country's banking regulator, said in a statement the failures had "undermined the credibility of Japan's bank settlement system".
Group CEO Tatsufumi Sakai and Chairman Yasuhiro Sato, as well as the head of the main banking unit and executives in charge of the group's systems and compliance, will step down by April to take responsibility for the glitches, the bank said.
Muzuho has not selected the next CEO and plans to leave the chairman post vacant.
The FSA reprimanded Mizuho for eight system glitches that took place this year, despite a $3.6 billion overhaul of its systems in 2019.
Mizuho Financial Group logo is seen at the company's headquarters in Tokyo, Japan August 20, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai Acquire Licensing Rights
The regulator referred to governance problems at Mizuho, including an underestimation of the risks related to its banking systems, insufficient attention to on-site conditions and a culture in which employees "do not say what should be said".
Separately, in the first such order issued to a bank since Japan overhauled its foreign exchange law in 1998, the finance ministry ordered it to take corrective measures to prevent any further breach of the law.
During one of the system failures, the bank failed to comply with anti-money laundering procedures necessary for overseas remittances, as Japan strives to tighten regulation to prevent money-laundering.
The ministry cited a lack of knowledge by Mizuho's executives of foreign exchange law, a lack of communication among sections concerned and the fragility of its system management as reasons for the censure.
Japan has redoubled efforts against money-laundering through a three-year action plan that includes tighter supervision of financial institutions following a report in August by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial crimes watchdog.
MAS bars DBS from new business acquisitions, non-essential IT changes for 6 months after disruptions
DBS will also not be allowed to reduce the number of its branches and ATMs. ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
Aqil Hamzah
Nov 1, 2023
SINGAPORE – For six months, DBS Bank will have to suspend non-essential changes to its IT systems, and will not be allowed to take on new business ventures, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Wednesday.
MAS said it directed DBS to suspend all changes to its IT systems, except for those related to security, regulatory compliance and risk management.
“This is to ensure that the bank dedicates the needed resources and attention to strengthen its technology risk management systems and controls,” it said. DBS will also not be allowed to reduce the number of its branches and ATMs.
The pause imposed by the regulatory body on the Republic’s largest bank comes after a series of disruptions to its services throughout the year.
The bank experienced major disruptions to its banking services on March 29, May 5, Sept 26, as well as Oct 14 and 20. The Oct 14 outage lasted 12 hours, affecting the bank’s digital services and automated teller machines (ATMs).
During this six-month period, the authority will not approve any new business acquisitions made by the bank either.
MAS said the move to disallow DBS from reducing the number of its branches and ATMs would ensure that there are enough alternatives for the bank’s customers if there are new disruptions. This directive will remain in place until MAS is satisfied with DBS’ progress in enhancing its operational resilience, the authority added.
MAS will review DBS’ progress at the end of six months, and may extend the duration of these measures, vary the additional capital requirement currently imposed, or take further action.
DBS currently has an additional capital requirement of about $1.6 billion, which MAS imposed in May. This followed a disruption to the bank’s digital banking and ATM services on May 5, which was preceded by a widespread disruption on March 29.
It also had to apply a multiplier of 1.8 times to its risk-weighted assets for operational risk. This was marked up from the 1.5 times multiplier applied in 2022, after it suffered its worst outage in more than a decade in November 2021.
MAS added that it will take up to 24 months for DBS to execute the planned changes to improve the resilience of its digital banking services.
“In the meantime, it is possible that disruptions may still occur. In such situations, MAS expects DBS Bank to promptly recover its services and communicate to its customers in a clear and timely manner,” MAS said.
Ms Ho Hern Shin, deputy managing director of financial supervision at MAS, said: “DBS must put in place immediate measures to ensure service reliability while it continues to invest in the longer-term efforts to bolster its operational resilience.
“We have imposed this six-month pause on the bank to give it the space to take the actions needed to maintain customer trust.”
In a press statement, DBS chairman Peter Seah apologised for the digital banking disruptions.
“With the incidents of the past year, we have failed to live up to these expectations, and have also fallen short of our own standards. As an acknowledgement that the bank could have done better, senior management will be held accountable, and this will be reflected in their compensation,” he said.
He added that, in the past few months, DBS has been trying to strengthen its resiliency and business continuity, and to be able to recover more quickly when incidents happen.
“This is a work in progress, and we seek customers’ patience as we work through our remedial actions,” Mr Seah said.
Under this fucker's watch many sinkies got scammed.
Sinkie's apprentice firing the serfs.
MAS penalties on DBS won’t set the bank back, analysts say
FILE PHOTO: A DBS logo on their office building in Singapore, February 22, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su
Abigail Ng
03 Nov 2023SINGAPORE: The punishment meted out to DBS appears "minor" and not commensurate with the impact of the service disruptions to Singapore's biggest lender, including one where online banking and ATM services were down for hours, analysts said.
On Wednesday (Nov 1), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said DBS would be barred from making non-essential IT changes and any acquisitions of new business ventures for six months.
DBS also will not be allowed to reduce the size of its branch and ATM networks until MAS is satisfied with the progress of the bank’s remediation plan.
And the financial regulator said it would continue to require DBS to apply a multiplier of 1.8 times to its risk-weighted assets for operational risk.
When asked if the penalties were reasonable, the National University of Singapore's Assistant Professor in Finance Ben Charoenwong said it was worth considering the impact that the disruptions had on customers.DBS is the “go-to bank” for many Singaporeans – some of whom may not do business with any other institutions, he said.
“If they are unable to access their funds or process payments, the cost to those users is the foregone economic transactions,” he said. “From that perspective, it seems the (penalties) and additional capital requirements appear to be minor.”
In a research note published on Thursday, RHB Bank research analysts said the management team at DBS could give more details on the impact of MAS' regulatory action, when its third-quarter results are released.
“But the direct impact looks to involve higher opex (compliance cost, tech spending) and capex,” the analysts wrote, referring to operational expenditure and capital expenditure.
“In our view, the impact does not represent too much of a setback to DBS,” the analysts told CNA separately.
ACQUISITION PLANS?
The ban on acquiring new business ventures in the next six months may also have a limited impact on DBS, with five analysts telling CNA they were unaware of any upcoming acquisition plans.“We note that the group has been focusing on integrating LVB (Lakshmi Vilas Bank) and Citi Taiwan acquisitions as well as guiding for higher dividends,” said Mr Thilan Wickramasinghe, head of Singapore research at Maybank.
“To us, this indicates limited appetite for any material (mergers and acquisitions) in the near term,” he said.
DBS took over India’s Lakshmi Vilas Bank in late 2020 and completed its acquisition of Citi’s consumer banking business in Taiwan in August this year.
MAS will review the progress made by DBS after the six-month window, and may extend the duration of measures, vary the additional capital requirement or take further actions.
“NOT A BAD IDEA” TO NOT FINE DBS
MAS did not impose any punitive monetary actions on DBS, noted Dr Patrick Thng, former chief information officer for finance and treasury at the World Bank.“It’s not a bad idea in the sense that instead of fining DBS and taking the money, they asked DBS to use that money to fix their infrastructure problems,” he said.
“To some extent, I commend MAS, I think that’s quite commendable.”
DBS chief executive officer Piyush Gupta said the bank will set aside S$80 million (US$58.6 million) to enhance system resiliency.
Consulting firm Accenture conducted an independent review and found four main areas of weakness for DBS – technology risk governance and oversight, incident management, system resilience and change management.To MAS, the board of directors and senior management play an important role in the oversight and management of technology risk, Dr Thng pointed out.
On that note, he said it was important for board members to have strong digital skills – beyond financial and business skills – to effectively steer the organisation.
“Many organisations, banks included, are not having enough people with digital experience on their boards,” he said, adding that it sometimes takes a disruption or outage to spur a company to find a board member with digital skills.
IMPACT ON DBS STOCK PRICE
Shares of DBS fell 1.12 per cent on Thursday, the first trading day after the penalties were announced by MAS.RHB Bank said it was possible that the decline was a reaction to the regulatory action, but pointed out that most banks' share prices slipped on the same day.
However, CGS-CIMB said DBS shares fell more than its peers on Thursday. UOB’s stock dipped 0.77 per cent, while OCBC fell 0.16 per cent.
Shares of DBS have fallen around 5 per cent so far this year, but analysts said it was not due to the service disruptions.“(The year-to-date) share price movement is primarily driven by earnings and management’s outlook in relation to the interest rates, and less so by the outages, in our view,” CGS-CIMB said.
Mr Wickramasinghe of Maybank said material impact on earnings or dividends was unlikely in the near term. In the medium term, growth could be affected by how DBS addresses the root causes of the outages and how risk management and control functions are strengthened, he said.
“Five major digital disruptions in the space of a year does raise concerns on system reliability and risk management,” he said, adding that DBS Group’s growth and product distribution strategies were very digital-centric.
“More clarity will be needed on how these can be executed under the current situation.”
Sinkees can punish DBS by moving their business to other banks. Will sinkees do that?
This episode reminds me of Saw Phaik Hwa when she was at SMRT making money only in retailing but ignored the maintenance of the trains which resulted in many breakdowns in 2011
She runs SMRT but has not taken a train during morning peak hours.
Her clueless remark about commuters being able to take the next train shows how detached she was from reality.
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