SINGAPORE: Artificial intelligence is beginning to contribute to fee income growth at DBS, with the bank seeing early benefits across its wealth management and corporate banking businesses, its CEO Tan Su Shan said on Thursday (Aug 6).Speaking to CNA's Elizabeth Neo after DBS reported a record second-quarter net profit and raised its guidance for 2026, Ms Tan said the bank was beginning to see more tangible business benefits from its AI investments."We're beginning to see the green shoots of AI working in generating ideation that generates fees," she said, adding that AI is also "nudging customers the right way", leading to a "higher velocity of transactions" and creating a fee-income "flywheel".DBS has been investing in AI for several years, applying it across a wide range of functions including customer service, risk management and software engineering.Earlier this year, the bank said its AI and data analytics initiatives generated about S$1 billion (US$780 million) in economic value in 2025.
WHY DBS RAISED ITS OUTLOOKMs Tan said the improved outlook reflected signs that Singapore interest rates were beginning to stabilise after declining over the past year, easing the headwinds that had weighed on the bank's earnings."What gave us the confidence was we saw interest rates bottom out, and we saw some stability in interest rates," she said.Ms Tan also pointed to broad-based fee income growth across its businesses."What I'm most pleased about is the fee growth is actually quite broad. It's not just wealth management. It's also our corporate banking business. It's also our transaction banking business. It's also loan fees."
