Homebound individuals and social distancing measures have fuelled a «quantum leap» in digital adoption for DBS, according to its group head of institutional banking Tan Su Shan.
«We were one of the first banks that had Covid affect us early on last quarter and that meant that we really didn’t want customers to come to the branch,» Tan said, referring to the February incident when the bank evacuated 300 employees from a Singapore branch following a confirmed staff infection. «We wanted [customers] to adopt the digital assets that we have.»
In the last three months, DBS saw a doubling of its active monthly mobile app user count; tripling of loan applications; quadrupling of migration from physical to pure digital channels; quintupling of registration of our QR-based instant corporate payment solution; and a seven-fold increase in API calls.
«The last three months have seen a massive quantum leap in customer adoption of digital technology,» Tan said in a recent conference.
Intensive Workshops
And the strong adoption rates are by no means achieved through passive approaches. Tan said the bank has spent numerous hours conducting workshops for companies of all sizes to support them in their «digital journey» to transition to new technology. In fact, the intensiveness of this process led Tan and her colleagues to create a video to recognize the efforts of the staff.
«Some of you might have seen this internal video. it was a thank you to our tech and ops team for working so hard through Covid,» Tan added. «It was a really bad video of us singing. I think it went viral.»
Sustainability Growth
Another highlighted area was in sustainable financing where DBS was making inroads to achieving its long-term goals and focused on key areas it calls the three T’s: transactions, transparency and, currently importantly for many, transition.
«Transition financing [helps companies with] going from brown to light green to dark green,» Tan said.
DBS has set a goal to reach S$20 billion ($14.4 billion) in sustainable finance by 2024 and, according to Tan, the bank is well underway to achieve the target with around S$13 billion ($9.3 billion) already registered.
