CEO Southeast Asia’s top bank DBS says AI adoption already paying off

SINGAPORE – Amid fears of a synthetic intelligence bubble, much has been fabricated from recent reports suggesting that AI has yet to generate returns for firms investing billions into adopting the tech. 

But that is not what the chief executive of Southeast Asia’s largest bank is seeing — she says her firm is already reaping the rewards of its AI initiatives, and it’s only just the start. 

“It is not hope. It’s now. It’s already happening. And it would get even higher,” DBS CEO Tan Su Shan told CNBC  on the sidelines of Singapore Fintech Week, when asked in regards to the promise of AI adoption.  

DBS has been working to implement artificial intelligence across its bank for over a decade, which helped prepare its internal data analytics for recent waves of generative and agentic AI. 

Agentic AI is a sort of artificial intelligence that relies on data to proactively make independent decisions, plan and execute tasks autonomously, with minimal human oversight.

Tan expects AI adoption to bring DBS an overall revenue bump of greater than 1 billion Singapore dollars (about $768 million) this 12 months, in comparison with SG$750 million in 2024. That assessment is predicated on about 370 AI use cases powered by over 1,500 models throughout its business. 

“The proliferation of generative AI has been transformative for us,” Tan said, adding that the corporate was experiencing a “snowballing effect” of advantages due to machine learning. 

A serious area through which DBS has applied AI is in its financial services to institutional clients, with AI used to gather and leverage data for clients with the intention to higher contextualize and personalize offerings. 

In keeping with Tan, this has resulted in “faster and more resilient” teams. The CEO believes that these uses of AI have contributed to a recent uptick within the bank’s deposit growth as in comparison with competitors’.

The corporate also recently launched a newly enhanced AI-powered assistant for corporate clients generally known as “DBS Joy,” which assists clients with unique corporate banking queries across the clock. 

MIT released a report in July that found 95% of 300 publicly disclosed AI initiatives, encompassing generative AI investments of $30–$40 billion, had failed to attain real returns. 

Nonetheless, not less than within the banking sector, there are signs that the tides are turning. 

While DBS doesn’t differentiate spending in generative AI from other in-house investments, other major banks have recently offered this comparison. 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stated in an interview with Bloomberg TV last month that the bank is already breaking even on its roughly $2 billion of annual investments in AI adoption. That represents “just the tip of the iceberg,” he added.

Those expectations are shared by DBS, which plans to proceed to speed up its AI development to change into an AI-powered bank.

The last word goal, in response to Tan, is for its generative AI to grow to be a trusted financial advisor for clients, including retail users who’re expected to interact with personalized AI agents through the DBS banking app. 

The bank already has over 100 AI algorithms that analyze users’ data to offer them with personalized “nudges,” corresponding to alerts on incoming shortfalls, product recommendations, and other insights. 

The corporate has launched several AI reskilling initiatives across departments this 12 months and has even deployed a generative AI-powered coaching tool to support these efforts. 

This can help the corporate automate mundane work and refocus its staff on constructing and maintaining human-to-human relationships with customers, quite than reducing headcount, Tan said. 

“We’re not freezing hiring, however it does mean reskilling. And that is a journey. It is a never-ending journey … a relentless evolution.”