DBS Bank services have been experiencing frequent issues lately. Following a large-scale service disruption in March, another disruption occurred today (5th), affecting ATMs, online banking, and other services. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the implementation of another round of additional capital requirements for DBS Bank later that evening.
MAS stated that the new round of additional capital requirements, combined with the requirements implemented in February of the previous year, means that DBS Bank will need to face a total of approximately SGD 1.6 billion in additional capital requirements.
Since DBS Bank’s services were disrupted in November 2021, MAS had proposed in February 2022 to raise the additional capital requirements to 1.5 times the bank’s operational risk assets. Now, it has been raised to 1.8 times.
In an announcement, MAS said that after the service disruption in March, DBS Bank had established a special committee to review the bank’s information technology. This review was conducted by independent third-party experts.
MAS subsequently instructed the bank to conduct a comprehensive review, including assessing the management of digital banking services, employee capabilities, operational processes, system resilience, and the architectural design of digital banking services. Now, MAS also requires the bank to include today’s service disruption event in the scope of the review.
“MAS also requires DBS Bank to take immediate measures to enhance the resilience and recovery capabilities of the existing system, including strengthening monitoring and more comprehensive testing, to minimize the impact on customer service.”
Ho Hern Shin, Deputy Managing Director (Financial Supervision) of MAS, said in a statement, “DBS Bank has failed to meet the MAS’s expectations for banks to provide reliable services to customers, and causing inconvenience to the public repeatedly is unacceptable.”
“This additional capital requirement highlights the seriousness with which MAS views this issue, and DBS Bank must spare no effort to address the root causes of these disruptions.”
DBS Group CEO Piyush Gupta apologized for the recent digital service disruption events.
“Our customers rightfully have higher expectations of us, and we are committed to doing better. After the event on March 29th, the bank established a special board committee, and independent external experts conducted a comprehensive review of our technological recovery capabilities. We will treat this review as the top priority and promptly implement all recommendations.”