THE head of Singapore’s biggest lender said only about half of the banking industry has made sufficient progress in transforming their businesses to embrace digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI).
“If I have to look around the landscape, I’d say maybe 50 per cent of companies have made enough progress on that,” Piyush Gupta told Bloomberg News’ Haslinda Amin in an interview on Thursday (Oct 17). “A lot of people have tried to digitise before they change the fundamentals,” he added. “I call that putting lipstick on a pig.”
Gupta, who will step down as chief executive officer of DBS Group Holdings in March, is widely credited for transforming South-east Asia’s biggest bank as it braces for new competition from fintech rivals such as Grab Holdings. That shift has helped reduce costs to win new clients, while compiling data to pave the way for artificial intelligence.
This year, the bank added S$800 million in value from its AI usage, and that will rise to more than S$1 billion in 2025, Gupta said. Common failures at many banks have been the result of technology mistakes and corporate culture, he said from the Bloomberg office in Singapore.
DBS became one of the world’s most profitable banks under Gupta’s tenure that started in 2009 and has included an expansion in Greater China. Its market value has risen to S$112 billion as at Thursday and its return on equity of more than 18 per cent surpasses many global banks.
In 2021, DBS was named the world’s best digital bank by Euromoney, a trade publication. The next year, Harvard Business School published a case study on areas including its embrace of digital technology.
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The transformation has not been without setbacks, and the firm was among banks in the 2000s that did not get it right, Gupta said. DBS has suffered from a series of technology glitches and last year drew penalties from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The CEO takes pride in changing the culture at DBS from what it was 15 years ago, calling it his biggest achievement. The bank today is “a little more entrepreneurial, a little bit more risk-taking, but most of all, it has got a little bit more confidence about what can be achieved”, he said.
Gupta’s deputy Tan Su Shan who is also head of the institutional banking group, will take the top job when he retires.
Asked whether he will stay in the financial industry after stepping down, Gupta said he’s unlikely to be actively involved with DBS, nor does he plan to join other banks. Still, “given the nature of Singapore, I can simply assume that they will probably involve me in something about that at some stage”, he said. BLOOMBERG
