Tan Su Shan, CEO and director of DBS Group—winner of this 12 months’s Greatest Financial institution in Asia-Pacific—discusses the good thing about AI investments.
As world banks navigate commerce fragmentation, AI disruption and risky markets, DBS continues to differentiate itself via sturdy profitability and an aggressive know-how technique.
On this dialog with Deputy CEO Tan Su Shan, the financial institution’s management discusses how DBS surpassed $100 billion in market capitalization, scaled AI throughout lots of of use instances and positioned itself to learn from shifting intra-Asia commerce flows.
Tan additionally outlines the challenges posed by tariffs, foreign-exchange swings and the accelerating evolution of generative and agentic AI as DBS seems to be towards 2026.
World Finance: What components formed your financial institution’s efficiency in 2025?
Tan Su Shan: We delivered a strong monetary efficiency in 2025, reflecting the resilience of our diversified franchise. Our whole earnings and revenue earlier than tax hit new highs of S$22.9 billion ($18 billion) and S$13.1 billion, respectively. Return on fairness (ROE) was 16.2%, inside our medium-term goal and a number of other proportion factors above our native and world friends.
An enormous a part of our success was being well-positioned to seize structural progress alternatives arising from the shifting macro panorama, together with rising intra-Asia commerce and funding flows, in addition to new commerce and provide corridors between Asia and different areas akin to Europe.
GF: What function did Al play in that efficiency?
Tan: We intention to maintain our management as an AI-enabled financial institution with a coronary heart, utilizing know-how to ship a aggressive benefit whereas creating tangible affect for patrons.
Now we have industrialized AI at scale, deploying greater than 430 use instances—4 occasions 2021 ranges—powered by over 2,000 refined fashions. These have delivered measurable outcomes, together with stronger threat administration, improved controls, and productiveness beneficial properties. In 2025, our information analytics and AI/ML initiatives generated roughly S$1 billion in financial worth.
Constructing on this basis, we’re embedding Gen AI and Agentic AI into buyer journeys and inside workflows. Horizontal capabilities akin to our DBS-GPT proprietary generative AI platform present role-based entry to thousands and thousands of inside paperwork, accelerating decision-making and problem-solving. Vertical options akin to DBS Pleasure, our Gen AI-enabled chatbot, ship always-on, high-quality buyer assist at scale, enhancing buyer satisfaction by 23% whereas dealing with greater than 235,000 AI-powered interactions. Collectively, these capabilities elevate productiveness, determination high quality, and buyer expertise by combining machine intelligence with human judgment.
GF: Which milestones did DBS attain in 2025?
Tan: It was a landmark 12 months for DBS, however world volatility, and the market’s confidence in our franchise has by no means been clearer. We surpassed the $100 billion market capitalization milestone in June and closed the 12 months at $124 billion, cementing our place among the many prime 25 banks globally.
Shifting forward, we stay targeted on constructing a resilient, growth-oriented, and future-ready market chief, anchored by our three strategic moats of belief, information, and tradition.
GF: What was 2025’s best problem for DBS?
Tan: Undoubtedly, our best problem was the onset of tariffs following Liberation Day and the market volatility that adopted. Whenever you layer on headwinds from rates of interest and important FX fluctuations, you create an ideal storm we needed to navigate. Regardless of these pressures, DBS delivered a strong monetary efficiency. We achieved this by being proactive with our steadiness sheet hedging, securing report deposit inflows, and sustaining a pointy, strategic give attention to high-ROE companies akin to wealth administration.
On the identical time, know-how continued to maneuver at a panoramic tempo, particularly with the fast shift towards Gen AI and Agentic AI. Luckily, we weren’t ranging from scratch, as we now have been working with AI for greater than a decade. Our early and sustained investments in information and know-how gave us the strong basis wanted to industrialize AI throughout lots of of significant use instances, positioning us to maneuver rapidly because the techno-logy evolves.
GF: Does 2026 current new challenges?
Tan: Our strategic priorities stay intact, and in 2026, we’ll proceed leveraging our core strengths—what we time period the “4 Ds”: Reliable, Diversifier, Digital, and Disruptor—to be a beacon of stability for our clients amid heightened volatility.
Now we have launched into our imaginative and prescient to turn out to be an AI-enabled financial institution with a coronary heart, reworking our working fashions, leveraging machine intelligence, and preserving human empathy to strengthen the belief clients place in us. We are going to proceed scaling our structural progress engines, which stay related even in a extra bifurcated world.
This consists of prioritizing progress in high-ROE companies akin to wealth administration, transaction companies, monetary establishments group, and treasury buyer gross sales. We additionally stay targeted on our six core markets in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, China, and Indonesia) and on constructing connectivity between our Western and Asian purchasers. Strengthening resilience throughout each organizational layer stays a key, ongoing precedence.
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