DBS Bank launched a digital banking platform called digibank in Singapore in 2016 that has since expanded to India and Indonesia. The platform focuses on integrating banking services into customers' lifestyles and daily needs. DBS worked with EY to develop its strategy for entering Indonesia, a growing and tech-savvy market that is increasingly competitive. Their approach focuses on addressing key customer pain points and differentiating digibank through personalized and seamless digital services. The goal is to move beyond traditional transactional banking and offer an integrated digital experience centered around customers' lives.

1. How the biggest
bank in Singapore
is driving digital
innovation in
Southeast Asia

2. 2 | How the biggest bank in Singapore is driving digital innovation in Southeast Asia
Should adapting services to a customer
always be at the top of a bank’s agenda
in every market?
DBS Bank’s internationalization strategy is built on the cornerstone of a customer-
centric digital platform which goes beyond banking by focusing on the customer’s
lifestyle and evolving needs.
March 20161
marked a watershed moment for DBS Bank as it
launched its innovative full-stack digital banking platform, the
digibank, in Singapore. In the first two weeks of its soft launch,
the app had seen more than 200,000 downloads2
.
Within a year, DBS Bank had expanded the app across two
high growth markets: India and Indonesia. Today, the bank is
servicing more than two million online users in both countries
and is expecting 8.5 million customers by 2021 — and none of
them would ever set foot into a DBS branch.
A US$375b3
asset size bank which serves more than 80% of
Singapore’s population, digibank represents a FinTech-led
strategy for entering new markets and growing organically,
and to move forward in a digital-led economy and getting
more embedded within their customers’ lifestyle. It is meant
to manage customer digital engagement and provide a range
of services centered on the evolving life needs and lifestyle of
the customer.
For DBS, payments and transaction enablement was a starting
point in many markets, in order to acquire customers and
create stickiness. Over time, digibank is expected to evolve
to offer the entire suite of banking services and more. This is
what lays behind its “Live More, Bank Less” vision.
EY has been a proud collaborator to DBS in this journey,
advising on the formulation of strategy for Indonesia.
The battle for the Indonesian customer
It is evident that the increasing use of technology is
changing consumer behavior in Indonesia. Despite being
mostly unbanked, Indonesia boasts a young and tech-
savvy population. The country has over 106 million
social media users who make over 3.2 million paid online
transactions per day4
on social media and e-commerce
websites. Although most consumers still make
payments through bank transfers and cash-on-delivery,
it is observed that many people are already using or
interested in internet banking.
Capitalists and entrepreneurs have surely taken notice,
with some of the region’s largest tech-unicorns based
here, including Go-Jek, Tokopedia and Traveloka. Some
of the largest FinTech conglomerates in the world,
including Alibaba’s Ant Financial, Tencent and Softbank,
have made significant investments in this market. The
local conglomerates, including Sinarmas Group, Salim
Group and Lippo, too have launched their own digital
propositions, to form protective moats around their
ecosystems. The battle for the Indonesian customer’s
attention is on and it is anything but pretty.
Source:
1. DBS Website
2. DBS Website
3. DBS Annual Report
4. EY Research

3. 3How the biggest bank in Singapore is driving digital innovation in Southeast Asia |
In this highly-competitive environment, EY worked with
DBS to answer the following questions to form their
growth strategy in Indonesia:
• What business propositions will solve the customer’s
key and urgent pain points today?
• What use-cases will give digibank a distinct value
proposition to differentiate itself?
• Will the proposition help digibank accelerate customer
acquisition?
• Can this be a tactical move that has high future
strategic value as well?
DBS understood that to grow its business in this
environment, against competitors that in many cases did
not have the pressures of quarterly public capital market
reporting, it needed a differentiated and compelling
proposition. It was going to be important that the digital
bank addresses the pain points customers most often
face, including inconvenient transaction handling, lack of
service personalization and lack of context.
Providing digital banking
services will soon come to
be a norm in the market.
We want to be more than
a provider of simple and
effortless online banking,
we want to provide an
experience where banking
is seamlessly integrated into
the lifestyle of the tech-savvy
and young population
in Indonesia.
“
Leonardo Koesmanto
Head of Digital Banking,
Consumer Banking Group
DBS

4. 4 | How the biggest bank in Singapore is driving digital innovation in Southeast Asia
Defining “banking”
for a new age
By seeking to integrate into all aspects of the customer’s digital life, DBS and EY are
enhancing customers’ digital banking experience, integrated multi-channel transaction
features to improve stickiness and fractured and fragmented customer experiences will
provide opportunities for entry via interoperability.
While increased acceleration in grassroots innovation is
great for solving societal pain-points and offering a variety
of services across segments, it also leads to increased
fragmentation. Moving between platforms is clunky and not
seamless, leading to a broken customer experience, errors and
increased operational risks within platforms. Imagine buying,
paying for and getting delivery of an item of interest off of an
Instagram hosted store? There are multiple points of failure.
DBS is very much aware of these existing and evolving pain-
points, and a seamless customer experience is at the heart
of digibank.
Larger Indonesian local banks have adopted internet banking
as the core feature of their service proposition. As Indonesia
consumers becoming more digitally adept, the preference
toward digital channel comes naturally into play. With
increased competition from outside the traditional financial
services sector, there is a need to go beyond offering a high-
quality web and mobile experience. It requires a complete
rethink of the current financial services delivery model:
• From product centric, to customer centric
• Process orientation, to customer experience
• Competition to collaboration
• Traditional product placement to contextual
• Low engagement to high engagement
Numerous factors influence customer experience, many of
which are intangible and driven by emotion or perception. In
the past, banks have focused on giving competitive interest
and merchant discounts. EY research however, suggests that
customers put greater importance on intangible factors such
as convenience and relevancy. The more banks can remind
customers on a daily basis of their superior service, the more
likely customers will pick them as the bank of choice in all
aspects of their life. The DBS strategy is one such compelling
approach to a transactional digital banking.
“To win the digital banking competition, a bank must
strategically manage multichannel, to create a seamless
customer experience,” says Nam Soon Liew, Managing Partner,
EY ASEAN Markets Leader, Ernst & Young Solutions LLP,
“An integrated transaction-platform ensures the transaction
journey remains reliable regardless of the customer’s
preferred device. This process will help to create a wonderful
and consistent experience for customers, thereby increasing
their loyalty to the platform.”

5. 5How the biggest bank in Singapore is driving digital innovation in Southeast Asia |
Building scale through beyond-banking ecosystems
Capitalizing on the emergence of integrated digital
ecosystems that serve customers without having
to leave.
With the growing number of traditional players (e.g.,
banks, telcos, etc.) and new-economy players (e.g.,
FinTechs, ride-sharing platforms, etc.) offering digital
services, there are increasingly blurring boundaries
between sectors. This trend provides ample opportunities
for financial institutions to merge their services into
customers’ daily life, including bringing offline services
to online.
“For customers, banking service is a means to an end:
buying groceries, growing a business, or purchasing
services. By only attending to one part of the customers’
journey, banks might miss out on substantial value. As
Asia’s banking customers migrate to digital channels,
banks are expected to follow suit by developing
integrated digital banking capabilities,” says Varun Mittal,
Director, EY Global Emerging Markets FinTech Leader,
Ernst & Young Solutions LLP.
Looking into such trends, EY professionals advised DBS
on how to capitalize on opportunities within the banking
and non-banking journeys of the customer.
“The starting point was more than 50 different retail
payment use-cases that surround a customer’s life.
Narrowing them down on criteria such as, macro-
economic trends, use-case market potential, existence
of competition, ability of DBS to create a differentiated
proposition, etc., the number of use-cases was
eventually narrowed down to three and presented as
recommendations. This ‘Growth Hack’, built upon EY’s
proprietary use-case scoring framework, allows platforms
to objectively evaluate use-cases and select the ones
that allow them to meet their business objectives.” says
Patrick Hanna, Partner, EY Transaction Advisory Services
Leader, Ernst & Young Solutions LLP.
A platform wrapped around
customers’ daily life is the perfect
place to offer additional services.
Such feature helps DBS enrich its
relationship with existing customers
and at the same time, increase
monetization opportunities.
“
Patrick Hanna
Partner,
Transaction Advisory Services Leader
Ernst & Young Solutions LLP

6. 6 | How the biggest bank in Singapore is driving digital innovation in Southeast Asia
Live more, bank less!
DBS’ foray into Indonesia and India has resulted in an exciting
strategic approach to digital services that solves key societal
pain-points, while allowing for a seamless, integrated and
personal digital experience. In emerging countries where there
are more internet users than there are banked customers,
this approach can drive significant growth, while managing
customer acquisition cost. The platform successfully
helped to enhance customers’ experience as well as attract
new customers.
Launching a successful digital
banking operation requires
understanding the customer’s
behavior evolution and the resulting
change in their needs. By focusing
on customer-centricity, banks will
be able to deliver superior digital
experiences and stay ahead of
their competitors.
“
Varun Mittal
Director,
Global Emerging Markets FinTech Leader
Ernst & Young Solutions LLP
Better digital banking
experience means a
better life for customers

7. Liew Nam Soon
Managing Partner,
ASEAN Markets Leader
Ernst & Young Solutions LLP
+65 6309 8092
nam-soon.liew@sg.ey.com
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