Our Goal Is To Make DBS The World's Most Innovative Bank

OVER THE PAST few years, DBS Bank has been accelerating its digital transformation agenda. This includes embarking on a comprehensive and holistic mission of building a start-up culture, re-architecting the bank’s technology infrastructure, and leveraging Big Data, biometrics and artificial intelligence to reimagine banking for its customers. Neal Cross, Managing Director and Chief Innovation Officer, shares insights with Nivedan Prakash on how the bank has reinvented banking through constant innovation.

DBS is one bank that has created a culture of innovation. How are you catalysing innovation across the organization?

Before I joined, the bank had undergone the process improvement to get the basics right and in turn, create a better customer experience. Then they started looking at design thinking training and did well on the culture movement. When I came on board, my immediate task was to regroup as well as rebuilt the innovation team and as a first initiative, we started engaging staff like startups. The first rule set up was that the innovation group would never ever invent products or services. Secondly, we will not hire technology people or business experts. With this approach, we have turned the entire bank into an innovation group.

As part of the innovation exercise, the bank staff run workshops either on their own, or in collaboration with startups, students, and corporate partners, wherein they figure out the issues and come up with creative ways to solve them. This has worked really well for us, as it not only helps the bank in understanding customer problems but also finding accurate solutions. The objective of all these is to make the whole organization more experimental and scientific in producing solutions for customers. Our goal is to make DBS the world’s most innovative bank.

Last year, 5000 bank staff across functions like HR, finance, corporate banking, and consumer banking among others were enrolled for an innovation program so that they could achieve what they intend to. Besides, we organized hackathons for the staff so that they could innovate new products for the bank. Our intention was to develop and bring in the culture of startups within the bank.

We have recently built Asia’s biggest banking innovation center in Singapore, called DBS Asia X (DAX), which underscores our ongoing commitment to shaping the future of banking and embracing the future of work.