2022 overview

Amid a volatile macro environment, Consumer Banking/ Wealth Management achieved a robust set of results and maintained a healthy balance sheet. We benefitted from the tailwinds that came through higher interest rates, although growth was moderated by market uncertainty which impacted wealth management fee activities. Business momentum was sustained by record-high net new money flows into the region and the expansion of our consumer finance business. We further bolstered our efforts to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to deepen customer engagement, which also yielded good results. We will continue to expand our business footprint and advance our digital solutions to deliver seamless and differentiated customer experiences.

Consumer Banking/ Wealth Management: Strong interest income growth cushions macro impact

We delivered solid earnings, driven by higher interest income. Our total income rose 25% to SGD 6.65 billion, due to substantial net interest margin expansion and growth in loan and deposit volumes. With an improved costincome ratio, net profit before tax grew 40% to SGD 2.69 billion.

Net interest income rose 68% to SGD 4.27 billion, driven by Fed rate hikes, stronger deposit earnings, and loan volume growth in most of our markets. This was partially offset by intensifying competition and accelerated refinancing of home loans. Nonetheless, we maintained our market share lead in Casa deposits and the mortgage loan space in Singapore.

Non-interest income fell 14% to SGD 2.38 billion as investments and bancassurance faced headwinds from market uncertainty. These declines were however offset by growth in card and loan-related fees. Card fees rose 20% to SGD 858 million, as travel spending returned to pre-pandemic levels in most markets. Despite soft consumer demand, the bancassurance business maintained its lead in Singapore for new business market share.

Wealth Management: Sustained growth buoyed by net new money

Our wealth franchise continued its strong performance, with total wealth management income increasing 20% to SGD 3.27 billion. Net new money inflows more than doubled to a record SGD 24 billion, with assets under management (AUM) climbing 3% in constant-currency terms to SGD 297 billion.

Growing client interest in succession planning and wealth preservation fuelled the growth of our Family Office business. Of the 700 Single Family Offices set up in Singapore, DBS Private Bank onboarded more than one-third of them. Our Family Office AUM more than doubled in the last two years. For the third consecutive year, DBS Trustee saw record fund inflows in excess of SGD 1 billion.

More clients shifted to sustainable investments that have MSCI ESG ratings of BBB and above. Today, they make up more than 60% of our AUM. With DBS Foundation and private equity firm Heritas Capital, we launched the Asia Impact First Fund to drive impact-first investing and support promising social enterprises.

We rolled out self-directed crypto trading via DBS digibank, enabling accredited investors to trade cryptocurrencies on DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx), one of the world’s first bank-backed digital exchanges. Today, nine in 10 trades are executed digitally.

The wealth management business continued to be recognised globally. We clinched the top honour of “Asia’s Best Bank for Wealth Management” from Euromoney and were once again named “Most Innovative Private Bank in the World” by Global Finance. We were also accorded “Best Wealth Manager Asia” by The Asset for the sixth consecutive year. DBS digibank (Wealth), our digital wealth management platform, was also named “Best Digital Portal for Wealth Clients” by Cutter Research for the fifth year running.

Consumer Banking: Leveraging AL/ ML and ecosystem partnerships to deepen engagement

One of our biggest differentiators is how we use data analytics and AI/ ML to better serve our customers. Every month, we leverage our AI/ ML models to generate 45 million hyper-personalised nudges that are sent to some five million customers across the region to guide them towards better investment and financial planning decisions.

Some one million nudges have also been delivered to our bankers so they can provide more informed and personalised advisory. DBS NAV Planner, our AI-powered digital financial planning tool, has improved our customers’ financial health. The average AUM of DBS NAV Planner users is 59% higher than non-users. Of the three million NAV Planner users, more than one-third are active users every month.

DBS PayLah! usage continues to grow with more than 25 million logins a month, where users book tickets and rides, pay bills, and scan and pay at more than 180,000 points in Singapore. Every month, we record more than one million scan-to-pay transactions at some 12,000 hawker stalls – six times the number in 2019. We also partnered UnionPay and PromptPay so customers can use DBS Paylah! beyond Singapore in 45 markets.

To help customers better manage their finances, DBS partnered Mastercard and Pine Labs to offer a “Buy Now Pay Later” option to some two million DBS/ POSB credit cardholders in Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong. This enables them to enjoy interest-free instalments with flexible repayment periods in physical and e-commerce stores.

We strengthened our presence overseas by scaling our ecosystem partnerships. In markets where we do not have a large physical distribution network, we were able to expand our consumer finance business by working with nine ecosystem partners such as ByteDance and Ctrip (China), Home Credit and CRED (India) and Kredivo (Indonesia) to offer lending solutions to their customers.

The volume of loans DBS disbursed across these markets grew 30 times between 2019 and 2022 to SGD 1.7 billion. These partnerships enabled us to acquire customers digitally, leverage data to augment our AI/ ML models, and increase customer engagement. In India, we partnered an India-based finance and investment services firm, IIFL, to scale the gold loans business. We grew this portfolio by 33% year-on-year and gold loan gains contributed about 40% of DBS’ sales volume growth in India in 2022.

The amalgamation of Lakshmi Vilas Bank (LVB) into DBS Bank India Limited has enabled us to accelerate our growth. Consumer banking revenue in India has grown by 50% between 2021 and 2022. We partnered Bajaj Finance to launch our first co-branded credit card in some 120 cities in India.

We are deepening our footprint in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) through the Wealth Management Connect (WMC) scheme. DBS Bank (Hong Kong)’s first two partnerships were with the Postal Savings Bank of China, one of the largest retail banks in China, and with DBS Bank (China). We recently announced in May our third partnership with the Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank, making DBS Bank (Hong Kong) the only bank with three WMC Southbound service partnering banks.

We are on track to complete the integration of Citi Taiwan's consumer banking business into DBS Taiwan in August 2023. When completed, the transaction will accelerate DBS Taiwan’s growth by at least 10 years to become the market’s biggest foreign bank.

Bolstering agility to better serve customers

We have expedited our transformation to a data-driven, agile organisation that puts our customers at the heart of everything we do. This new way of working, what we call Managing through Journeys (MtJs), galvanises technologists, relationship managers and business teams to leverage our data and digital capabilities to deliver new offerings more quickly. Across our markets, we operationalised MtJs performance cells in key consumer finance products and customer segments. We made good progress, launching features such as a new online client onboarding process for personal loans in Taiwan and smart fee waivers in Singapore.

Helping our customers live sustainably and fight inflation

We continued to encourage customers to adopt sustainable living habits with our green offerings.

DBS LiveBetter, a one-stop digital sustainability platform in DBS digibank, is now available in Singapore and Hong Kong. To date, more than one million customers engaged with the platform such as accessing eco-friendly tips; tracking and offsetting their carbon footprint with the industry’s first autonomous carbon calculator. Some 1,000 tonnes of carbon emissions have been offset. DBS LiveBetter users have also invested some SGD 8 million in green funds and donated over SGD 700,000 towards environmental and social causes.

Amid persistently high inflation and rising cost of living, we were the first bank in Singapore to launch a ‘Fight Inflation’ package last August, equipping those earning less than SGD 2,500 a month with solutions to stretch their dollar. They included rebates and cashback offers on their everyday spend. We were also the only bank that offered a competitive HDB loan that is on par with HDB’s concessionary loan rate.

As a small gesture of encouragement to the community amid inflationary times, DBS launched an initiative to subsidise five million hawker meals over 12 months in Singapore.

What we look forward to

We believe that digitalisation has become the baseline, and the real litmus test for the bank will be how we leverage data and technology to create innovative solutions that can help our customers protect and grow their wealth, and secure their financial wellness. It is now more critical than ever to help customers navigate these uncertain times with confidence. Our scale, assets, digital capabilities and people will be the essential levers of positive impact that can foster a more equitable and inclusive society.