Digital solutions help companies manage global shifts, says Aaron Chiew, Head of IBG Digital Channels for the Institutional Banking Group at DBS Bank.
Global Finance: How does your digital focus help customers respond to ongoing global shifts?
Aaron Chiew: Businesses today face multiple complexities. Supply chain disruptions, Asia’s growing middle-income population and the rapid digitalization of financial services have led to a fundamental shift in consumer behavior and the way companies approach treasury, liquidity and supply chain management. DBS has embarked on our digital transformation journey since 2014 and has been able to quickly roll out digital solutions to help customers address pain points and seize new opportunities arising from these global shifts.
We use digitalization around four key areas of focus for our customers. The first is to simplify relationship onboarding and make banking with DBS even easier. We have transformed small and medium-sized businesses [SME] onboarding with enhanced self-service experiences such as digital and mobile onboarding to reduce paperwork and bank branch visits. We’ve also transformed enterprise onboarding by introducing a Transition Management Suite that allows customers to integrate their existing bank’s instruction files with us.
The second is to enable effortless transactions for our customers to meet the growing global demand for cross-border payments, e-commerce transactions and 24/7 on-demand services. With a single bank account and API integration with DBS Globesend, financial institutions and payment service providers can route their customers’ payments through our global payout network, connecting them to more than three billion accounts and digital wallets covering 132 currencies in 190 markets.
The third is to enable reliable maintenance by creating new service elements to achieve end-to-end service excellence. For example, DBS has launched a Supplier Hub to improve connectivity between buyer and supplier ecosystems. The Supplier Hub has reduced the time it takes to onboard a customer’s supplier into its supplier finance program from two weeks to just 30 minutes, while giving suppliers full visibility into their invoices and payments.
The fourth is protecting our customers by ensuring strong digital risk management processes and investing in protection against malware threats to address growing cybersecurity risks. Last year, we implemented enhanced security features in our corporate banking application to proactively protect customers from other applications with risky consent settings or when screen sharing is detected.
Collectively, these initiatives enable us to better support customers through the ups and downs and across business cycles. Our customers recognize the value proposition of these initiatives, as reflected in our strong business customer satisfaction ratings across our digital channels, growth in our digital customer acquisition and increased market share for digital transactions in an increasingly competitive environment.
girlfriend: How do you bring accessibility to APIs?
Chiew: Digitalization makes it possible for companies to seize new opportunities arising from ongoing global shifts. However, not every company, especially SMEs, does not have the capabilities or resources to do this quickly.
With our Digital Onboarding Portal, we support customers in their digital transformation by providing a dedicated storefront that provides access to an extensive library of approximately 180 types of highly modular APIs. These APIs integrate the real-time processing of payments, accounts receivable and information requests into our customers’ business workflows, allowing them to quickly scale their digital propositions. The portal also allows customers to learn how each API works and the benefits it brings, lowering the barrier to entry for small and medium businesses looking to digitize.
girlfriend: What benefits does generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) have for corporate banking?
Chiew: DBS recently announced that it will equip its customer service agents in Singapore with a GenAI-powered virtual assistant – ​​CSO Assistant – before the end of 2024. CSO Assistant transcribes customer queries in real time and performs ‘live’ searches in the bank’s knowledge base. to quickly retrieve question-specific information. This allows social organizations to deliver solutions faster, with as much as a 20% reduction in call handling.
In addition to customer queries, we also leverage GenAI to deliver transformative efficiencies to customers. For example, GenAI has enabled us to transform paper-based banker’s guarantee or BG processes. By feeding BG text documents into an AI playground, GenAI can provide appropriate prompts and reduce the manual effort required to review BG texts, optimizing operational resources for higher value opportunities.
