SINGAPORE: DBS Group is banking on artificial intelligence to drive productivity and new revenue streams, even as near-term headwinds from lower interest rates and global tax rules temper earnings.

Singapore’s biggest lender on Thursday (Nov 6) announced that its third quarter net profit fell 2 per cent year-on-year to S$2.95 billion (US$2.3 billion), though the result still beat economists’ expectations.

Chief executive officer Tan Su Shan described the April to September period as a “solid” Q3 despite significant macro pressures.

“I would say it was a high-quality quarter, in spite of the interest rate headwinds in Singapore, as well as the tax equalisation,” she told CNA.

“Nonetheless, that was made up for by massive growth in wealth management … fee growth across all parts of the bank (and) trading income were also very good.”

The bank expects 2026 earnings to dip slightly from this year’s due to continued interest rate pressures.

However, Ms Tan pointed to structural tailwinds in Asia’s wealth management and capital markets sectors as buffers.

“Assets run by financial institutions, pensions, insurance companies, banks – they’re all growing really nicely,” she said. “There’s a silver population in Asia. They all need wealth solutions.”

BILLION DOLLAR AI PUSH

DBS is looking to technology – particularly AI and data-driven automation – to sustain earnings momentum and build long-term efficiency.

The bank is on track to see S$1 billion in incremental impact from its use of AI this year, said Ms Tan.

“(AI) is literally embedded in our processes already,” the CEO said. She added the bank is exploring agentic AI – systems which need limited human supervision to accomplish tasks – new language models and even artificial superintelligence.

“It’s a culture of DBS to continue with that experimentation. We encourage our staff to embrace it. We train them, they train themselves, and we experiment.”

Ms Tan said the bank has implemented about 1,500 AI models across more than 370 use cases, delivering tangible business benefits.

“These models have fielded many outcomes. AI models can tell us about credit issues before they happen. They can mitigate loss or help with credit profiling. They can help you be more efficient, more productive,” she said.

“A lot of grunt work, like reading documents or legal jargon, (AI) can crunch through all that, assimilate (and) summarise. The models will understand customers’ propensity to spend, to invest, to save, etc.”

She credited the bank’s early investment in data management for giving it an edge.

“You got to organise your data right,” she said. “We have a bit of a head start. We started many years ago to create our own data lake, set up processes and protocols, data security, and philosophy around how we deal with data.”

BALANCING AUTOMATION & EMPLOYMENT

While DBS has previously said that around 4,000 temporary and contract roles could be affected over three years due to AI adoption, Ms Tan emphasised that the artificial intelligence push is also creating new opportunities.

“In every revolution – the industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the internet revolution, now the AI revolution, old jobs may disappear, and new jobs will come,” she said. “It’s our job as responsible employers to make sure that we train our staff along the way.”

She noted that new roles are being added, particularly in areas that require human interaction.

“We need more relationship managers, for example,” she said. “A lot of the mundane work can go to robots and AI, but humans still need human interaction. Clients still want to talk to a human.”