How DBS Bank Became The Best Digital Bank In The World By Becoming Invisible

Every year, financial services magazine Euromoney gives out numerous awards for excellence to firms in many categories, at country, regional, and global levels. Their inaugural pick for best digital bank: Singapore-based DBS Bank.

DBS wasn’t always a digital leader, however. The story of its digital transformation is all the more remarkable because one of its goals for its technology – in fact, for the entire bank – is to disappear from view.

First Step: Eliminate ‘Waste’

DBS is a midsized Asian bank with about 22,000 employees, created by the Government of Singapore in 1968 to help modernize the island nation.

Paul Cobban, Chief Operating Officer, Technology and Operations for DBS Bank. Image credit: DBS Bank.
Paul Cobban, Chief Operating Officer, Technology and Operations for DBS Bank. Image credit: DBS Bank.

However, when DBS brought in Paul Cobban, who is now Chief Operating Officer, Technology and Operations for DBS, to spearhead the bank’s transformation in 2009, they were far from best – in fact, they were among the worst.

Cobban recalls an eye-opening story from his first day at the bank. “I was in a taxi and I mentioned I worked at DBS,” Cobban recalls. “The taxi driver said DBS stood for ‘damn bloody slow.’” True enough, DBS had the lowest customer satisfaction scores of any bank in Singapore.

Read the entire article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2016/12/23/how-dbs-bank-became-the-best-digital-bank-in-the-world-by-becoming-invisible/.

Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers.

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