Overview

• DBS Bank, Singapore's largest lender, has faced repercussions from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) following a series of digital banking disruptions, the most recent one on October 14. The MAS has barred DBS from new business ventures acquisitions and non-essential IT changes for six months.
• In response, DBS Chairman Peter Seah has stated that the bank's senior management will be held accountable for these service disruptions, and this will reflect in their compensation. Seah has also apologized on behalf of DBS for falling short of their expected standards.
• DBS said it is working towards a 'comprehensive roadmap' to improve technology resiliency, expected to take between 12 to 24 months to fully implement. This follows a review from consulting firm Accenture, which identified gaps in technology risk governance and oversight, incident management, system resilience, and change management.
• The bank has also pledged to strengthen system resilience and tighten change management processes. Key digital services including balance inquiry, overseas payments, and domestic payments are aimed to have an average downtime of no more than 1.5 hours per month over three months.
• DBS CEO, Piyush Gupta, has announced that the bank will set aside an $80 million 'special budget' to improve system resiliency and ensure high service availability. He assured that improvements will be evident in the near term and over time.