2024 overview

Consumer Banking/ Wealth Management delivered a solid set of results with broad- based income growth. In particular, the easing of interest rates in the second half of the year buoyed investor confidence, which drove wealth management non-interest income to a new high.

The full-year impact of the consolidation of Citi Consumer Taiwan was materially accretive to earnings. The franchise fuelled growth in wealth management and card fees, and bolstered our deposits and loans. Today, DBS is the biggest foreign bank by assets in Taiwan.

Efforts to deepen customer relationships and drive productivity also yielded benefits. Leveraging data, analytics and technology, we made further headway in tailoring our offerings to the needs of various customer segments as well as enhancing the customer experience across our digital and physical touchpoints.

We will continue to fortify our franchise by doubling down on high-ROE businesses, such as wealth management, while providing more customer value and bolstering their financial wellness.

Record high income for Consumer Banking/ Wealth Management

We delivered a robust performance from net interest income and fee income growth. Total income rose 13% to SGD 10.2 billion, led by double-digit growth in wealth management fees globally, including our six core markets. Net profit before tax grew 9% to SGD 4.44 billion.

Net interest income rose 4% to SGD 6.47 billion, driven by stronger deposit and loan balances. The growth more than offset a net interest margin decline from lower interest rates.

Non-interest income grew 33% to SGD 3.69 billion. Excluding Citi Consumer Taiwan, it rose 25%.

The increase in non-interest income was led by wealth management as stronger investor sentiment drove investment and bancassurance product sales. Card fees also rose from higher spending despite more intense competition.

In Singapore, we maintained our leadership in Casa deposits, credit cards and mortgage loans. Our bancassurance business also held its lead for new business market share.

Wealth Management: Multi- year outperformance buoyed by record-high wealth fees

With Asia becoming one of the world’s fastest-growing wealth centres, high-net- worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals have been increasingly diversifying their investments into the region. In 2024, clients of more than 120 nationalities entrusted us with more of their assets, with inflows from North Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Our wealth management franchise extended its multi-year outperformance. Total wealth management income rose 18% to SGD 5.22 billion, underpinned by resilient net new money inflows and robust fee income. Wealth management non-interest income climbed 45% to SGD 2.60 billion, outpacing many of our regional and global peers.

Assets under management (AUM) grew 17% to SGD 426 billion. The percentage of AUM in investments rose to a record high of 56% as our clients put more money to work. We have also been more efficient than other private banks in the region, with a cost-income ratio of 47% in 2024.

In the past year, four in 10 of our new private bank client acquisitions were existing DBS Treasures clients who moved up the wealth continuum. Many clients have also broadened their portfolios to include private assets. We have also been leveraging the synergy between our wealth and institutional banking teams to advise two-thirds of our clients who are business owners on the management of their personal wealth and businesses.

Our Family Office business continued to gain market share in Singapore. Of the over 2,000 Single Family Offices set up in Singapore, DBS Private Bank onboarded more than one-third of them. We gained sustained interest from regional wealthy families in our first-in-industry DBS Foundry Multi Family Office Variable Capital Company which offers a range of customisable investment strategies for wealthy families.

Our broad-based, diversified offering paired with prescient investment insights by our Chief Investment Office enabled our clients to achieve good returns in multi-asset portfolios. The DBS Barbell strategy has outperformed its peers, putting it in the top 5% of its category.

Testament to the strides we have made in our wealth strategy, our wealth management business continued to be recognised globally. We were named “World’s Best for High Net Worth”, “World’s Best for International China Clients” and “Asia’s Best for Family Office Services” at Euromoney’s inaugural Private Banking Awards. We also retained Euromoney’s “Asia’s Best Bank for Wealth Management” award for the third year running.

Consumer Banking: Deepening and retaining customer relationships through ‘phygital’ engagement

We recognise the need to continue earning the trust of our customers to be their primary financial partner. One of our key differentiators is our phygital approach to engaging and servicing customers. We combine our digital capabilities with the expertise of our frontline branch staff and wealth managers across our physical network to serve the needs of our 18.4 million clients and customers worldwide.

We made it more intuitive for customers to enhance their financial well-being. In 2024, we:

• Engaged more than 13 million customers across the region with more than 1.2 billion personalised AI-powered nudges to guide them towards better investment and financial decisions. In Singapore, those who engaged with nudges and used the bank’s AI-powered financial planning tool saved two times more, invested five times more and were nearly three times more insured than non-users.
• Gave close to three million – or eight in 10 – eligible retail customers access to personal wealth planning managers – a first-of-its-kind service that a bank in Singapore is providing to retail customers. These WPMs provide personalised advice to customers – from the first dollar they invest in the markets to the decisions they make about their long-term retirement planning.

We also made it easier for customers to manage their everyday banking transactions, like setting up new accounts, making payments and protecting themselves from scammers.

We further entrenched the usage of digital transactions across key markets. More than seven in 10 PayNow funds transfers and payments in Singapore today are performed by DBS customers. Our mobile wallet PayLah!, which marked its 10th year in service, hit a record 41.6 million logins a month, in which 2.8 million users can pay at over 77 million QR acceptance points worldwide. In the past year, cross-border QR payments made through PayLah! nearly tripled in transaction volume.

With the integration of Citi’s consumer banking business, we became the largest card issuer among foreign banks in Taiwan with 2.5 million cardholders. Today, more than two million of our customers use their DBS digibank and Card+ apps to fulfill their banking and lifestyle needs. As a result, 90% of transactions, such as remittances, ETFs and equity investments, are now conducted digitally.

Amid the rise in scams, we have also enabled more than 1.5 million customers in Singapore to use self-managed security features to protect themselves from scammers. Customers can lock up their funds and prevent digital transfers out, activate multiple locks on their cards, manage threshold alerts and thwart malware threats.

Driving agility and productivity to better serve our customers

We continued to make steady progress across the Managing Through Journeys (MtJs) squads comprising more than 2,000 technologists, wealth managers and business teams across our markets. Today, we tap on Gen AI to reduce the time taken by private bank relationship managers to research and provide tailored recommendations for their client meetings. In China, we improved customer satisfaction scores and drove unit trust investments with Gen AI-enhanced client service experience.

Standing by our customers, heartland businesses and the community

With stubbornly elevated cost of living, we want to do what we can to support our customers, especially by helping those facing acute financial stress tide over the tough times.

After a hawker meal subsidy scheme ended in July 2024 in Singapore, we offered a new programme of cashback rewards and discounts for purchases in the heartlands and selected supermarkets. Since the launch, heartland merchants and wet market stallholders have seen a 40% boost in their weekend earnings via PayLah! transactions.

These efforts were in addition to the bank’s commitment of up to SGD 1 billion over 10 years to step up support for vulnerable communities and catalyse social impact.

We have also bolstered outreach efforts to strengthen financial and digital literacy, and anti-scam education. Together with the DBS Foundation, our employees reached out to some 90,000 people via interactive digital and financial literacy workshops in schools and heartland communities. (See POSB Highlights)

What we look forward to

Our success is measured not only by our financial results, but also by the ability to deliver value for our customers and communities. I am so proud of how the resilient growth of our business has also made a meaningful and enduring impact on all our stakeholders in good and bad times.

What set us apart from our peers have been our unmatched resources and scale to deliver solutions with innovation, as well as our unwavering dedication to serve our customers’ best interests. While shifts in the macroeconomic environment and rapidly ageing populations may pose challenges, we believe they also open up opportunities.

We will tap on the full capabilities of the franchise to support our customers and empower them to attain their financial goals. Most of all, by sustaining our business success and being a positive force in our communities, we are committed to doing well by doing good.