DBS Bank was recognized by Harvard Business School as one of the top ten digital transformations of the last decade and it also won the top three most prestigious world bank awards. This presentation is a summary from my book World’s Best Bank - A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation that tells the story of how DBS became the world’s best bank by leveraging digitalization.

1. Global Pioneer and
Specialist in Strategy &
Digital Implementation
Robin Speculand
Executive Briefing

2. What percentage of digital
transformations succeed?

3. Less than
One in Five Digital
Transformations
succeed.

4. What needs to change in your leader’s
mindset to transform to digital?

5. Snapshot

6. Piyush Gupta Stewardship

7. World’s best bank for the third year running
First bank in the world to win all
three awards simultaneously

8. World’s best bank for the third year running

10. 2020 Results
DBS’ franchise demonstrated remarkable resilience in 2020. With central banks slashing interest
rates to bolster economies, DBS’ net interest margin fell 27 basis points to 1.62%. Despite this,
total income remained stable at SGD 14.6 billion.

13. Agenda
How do you
Transform your technology architecture to support digital transformation?
Become a customer obsessed organization?
Create a startup culture?

14. Agenda

15. The Asia Wave
Customer Service 1
Process Improvement
2
Culture
3
The bank did not know it at the time, but this laid the
groundwork for the Digital Wave.

16. The Asia Wave: Internal Focus

17. The Perfect Storm

18. The Perfect Storm
Of people prefer having dental
surgery over dealing with a bank!
74%
Time magazine
“
“

19. The Perfect Storm

20. The Bet
In 2014
“Bet on digital”
$200,000,000
In 2013, the DBS board had already taken the view that the future for us and for
our industry would have to be digital.
“We felt that if we didn’t lead the charge, frankly, we might die.” - Peter (Chairman)

21. Agenda

22. The Digital Wave

23. What is your digital purpose?

24. The Digital Purpose

25. The better the technology, the
less visible the bank becomes!
“ “

27. Should you start digital transformation as a
separate initiative outside the organization or
from the core inside the organization?

28. Attack from the Core:
If you want to make change real, and if you really want to make
change cohesive, then you must attack the core.
“ “

29. Tracking Digital Transformation

30. How will you measure your digital
transformation?

31. Digital Scorecard

33. How do you define your
digital customer?

34. How do you Define a Digital Customer
A digital customer his either within the last 12 months:
Made A Product Purchase Or Segment Upgrade Via Digital Channel
Done More Than 50% Of Financial Transactions Via Digital Channel
Download And 50% Of Non-financial Transactions Via Digital Channels

35. Early Successes

36. 30,000

37. CHALLENGES
Transforming
from
outsourcing
to insourcing
Adopting
cloud native
Cadence of
development

41. Using open-source software like Google.
G
Running on Amazon’s cloud platforms.
A
Using data and automation to scale, and provide personalized recommendations like Netflix
N
DBS as a digital and data bank of Singapore
D
Design like Apple
A
Be a learning community like LinkedIn and push for continuous learning
L
Become more collective like Facebook
F

42. Five Building Blocks Supported by Five Elements
We came up with five key
elements that had to change.
“ “
David Gledhill,
Chief Information Officer

43. Five Key Elements that had to Change
Shift from
“Project” to
“Platform”
Develop
High
performing
Agile Teams
Automate
Everything
Design for
Modern
Systems
Organise for
Success
Fund the platform and practice agile at
scale.
From testing through deployment to
increase cadence
Build systems that are scalable elastic
and ready for experimentation.
Build infrastructure engineering, business-
ops teams and ensure they interact?
Shift from individual projects that need
approvals, subcommittees to giving the freedom
to a group of people to operate like a platform.

45. 30,000

46. CHALLENGES
Deliver a delightful
hassle-free customer
experience
Have the highest
customer satisfaction
scores in the banking
world
Build ecosystems to
enhance customer
journeys

47. What does digitalization mean to customers?

48. Embed in the Everyday Life of Customers

50. Customer
Journey
Mapping

51. “Job To Be Done”
A part of mapping a customer journey is asking,
“What is the job to be done?”
The term was coined by
Clayton Christensen

52. Pain Points
A part of mapping a customer journey is also
asking,
“What Are the customer pain points?”

53. Pain Point:
Customer's branch wait time.

54. Initially staffed by younger people
as new tech. But older tellers
preferred as…
Pain Point: waiting at branch
Solution: VTM

55. Solution: Predictive Analytics
DBS has the highest velocity ATMs in the world.
Pain Point: Cash-outs

57. Design Thinking
THEN NOW
Product Centric
It’s all about ME
Customer Centric
It’s all about YOU
Featured-focused
What new products can we sell?
“Let's sell a new mortgage load.”
Experience-benefit focused
How can customers get their job done fast?
“How can we help realize the dream?”

58. What does digitalization mean to employees?

61. Powering Ecosystems & Partnerships

62. Cryptocurrency Exchange

63. 30,000

64. CHALLENGES
Continue to
transform
the culture
Continually
experiment
and innovate
Create the
happiest
workforce in
the industry

65. What are the three most important things
that need to change in your culture to
support your digital transformation?

66. Largest roadblock to a
start-up culture in DBS?

67. MOJO doubled the
effectiveness of
meetings in the bank
and created a
positive side effect.

68. How can you make meetings more
efficient and effective?

69. Joy Space

70. How can you create an environment that
encourages the right actions to
implement your digital transformation?

71. ABCDE Approach
What makes a Startup Culture?

72. 30,000
ABCDE Approach

73. Fusing the Digital DNA

74. 27,000
ABCDE Approach

76. No Manager’s Approval for Training
1
Back to School - Inspired by Google’s “g2g” teaching network, employees dedicate a portion
of their time to helping their peers learn and grow.
2
Learn By Doing - Learning makes up only 10 per cent of a person’s transformation; doing
makes up the rest e.g., customer journeys and hackathons
3
Over-40 Hackathon
4
Empowerment
5
Be a Learning Organization Tips & Tools

77. Gamified Machine Learning for Everyone

78. 27,000
ABCDE Approach

79. Consumer Bank Transforms
The Consumer team identified three core principles to
become more customer obsessed:
Product design had to be
customer centric by using
design thinking.
1
Customer journey designed
for no calls, no branches and
no cash.
2
Strive for STP (Straight
Through Processing) was
essential.
3

80. Singapore Management University’s Annual
Customer Satisfaction Survey

81. 27,000
ABCDE Approach

82. Data Transformation Three Pillars:
The analytics is the easy part. Getting
people to change their working
approach in the hard part.
“ “
Sameer Gupta
(Chief Analytics Officer)

83. Better Data,
Better Decisions

84. Data Transformation Three Pillars:

85. How do you ensure data is at the heart of all
your decision-making?

86. An early success #1
Reducing the Number of Reports
An early success came from the credit card
business where about 80 reports were sent
monthly.
The team drilled down these 80 reports and
created eight “ClickView” dashboards that
became available daily. Some reports became
available in real time.

87. Control Tower – Future of Ops in DBS

88. 27,000
ABCDE Approach

89. Experimentation
The most important part of any culture is
psychological safety because without it, people
do not raise issues and they hold back on ideas.
“
“
Paul Cobban
(Chief Data and Transformation Officer)

90. How can you create a culture of
psychological safety?

91. Initial Experiment Target
Only 97 go through

94. Bank Ignited The Strategy By:
Using the scorecard, as a signpost, to guide the
whole bank
1
Everyone at every level learning about how you
go about digitalization
2
Becoming a data driven company
3
Invested in people
4
The senior leaders being involved in hackathons
and customer journeys from the start
5
Building ecosystem partnerships
6
The banks IT architecture and culture
transforming
7
Early success, e.g., Digibank and DBS PayLah!
8
Eliminate paper, layers and bureaucracy of
approval to be agile
9
Improve meetings – MOJO
10
Experiment and reward failure
11
Customers obsessed and knowing the
‘job to be done’
12

95. Digital Benefits

96. Digital Benefits
Digital customer brings in TWICEthe income.
x
2X

97. Overtook:
as SE Asia’s
most valuable
company
as a stronger
brand

99. We still have a lot of work to do
before we can compare ourselves
with Alibaba and Google.
“ “

101. Committed to Creating a More Sustainable Future

102. Continuing Culture by Design during COVID

103. What is the single most importance
application for your organization?

104. Half an hour after I finish
you have forgotten half of
what I said!
“
“
Institute of America Research

105. Follow me on: