DBS has been named the inaugural winner of the Digital Transformation Award in the Hackett Group’s Digital Awards 2020.
The bank was also a Finalist in the ‘Automation – Artificial Intelligence’ category, for its Joy Corporate Banking Chat Bot. This is the first time that a Singapore company has been recognised in the Hackett Group’s awards.
DBS has in recent years set out to address the radical shift in banking in the digital age by transforming multiple aspects of its business. This was done using a range of automation, analytics and Artificial Intelligence technologies.
Hackett highlighted how these efforts have proven particularly invaluable with the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic, as the bank managed to leverage its Analytics-Based Operations Resource Management (ORM) tool to model various operational scenarios and enable more efficient capacity planning.
Through the simulation capability of the ORM tool, the bank was able to obtain additional insights on number of staff required for optimal efficiency. It could also suggest overtime hours in order to support volume spikes in various business areas.
One area in which this was applied was in SME Operations. As a result, DBS was able to avail more than SGD1.1 billion in loans to micro- and small-enterprise customers during the pandemic, even as more than 80 per cent of the bank’s staff worked from home.
“Covid-19 has demonstrated the value of our digitalisation efforts, both in respect of customers as well as employees," shared Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Bank.
For the bank's customers, its digital onboarding and transaction capabilities allowed easy access across products such as payments, trade, equity trading and investing. "This resulted in above market increases in volumes and allowed us to be the principal channel for the government to activate several relief programmes."
Meanwhile, for employees, easy remote working, AI-driven contact tracing and sensor-led social distancing created safety and trust, Gupta added.