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Tan meets with leaders of sustainability-oriented businesses at a DBS event in September.<\/p>\n
Juliana Tan for Fortune<\/p>\n
To that end, Tan and her leadership team have embraced a strategy that combines old-fashioned values of trust and safety with newfangled technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies. She is eyeing new markets in Asia and the Gulf states, and revamping DBS\u2019s organizational structure and culture to make it feel more like \u201cone bank\u201d and less like a collection of siloed services.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cResilience\u201d is a recurrent theme in conversations with Tan. \u201cI think Piyush\u2019s leadership enabled us to build a really solid foundation to navigate what\u2019s ahead,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I also think what\u2019s ahead is going to be tough\u2026I\u2019ve told colleagues, \u2018This is going to be a volatile year, so you better buckle up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
DBS, like Tan, was born to austerity. Originally named the Development Bank of Singapore, DBS was established by the government of Singapore in 1968, three years after the city-state declared its independence from Malaysia, and was tasked with providing long-term financing for industrial and infrastructure projects deemed crucial to Singapore\u2019s survival. That meant large, illiquid investments in sectors like shipping, manufacturing, real estate, and utilities\u2014 endeavors most private banks considered too risky.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fledgling institution struggled to raise capital, attract partners, and recruit experienced bankers to fulfill its development mandate. Nonetheless, in its first decade, DBS underwrote power plants and water treatment facilities; Singapore\u2019s flagship industrial zone and sprawling container port; the national shipping line; Singapore Airlines<\/a> and Changi Airport; as well as the government\u2019s ambitious public housing program.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the 1980s and 1990s, as Singapore\u2019s economy matured, DBS moved into full-service commercial and consumer lending. In 1998, DBS acquired Singapore\u2019s Post Office Savings Bank, adding 3 million customers, making DBS the dominant retail bank in Singapore. DBS has also expanded overseas, acquiring Hong Kong\u2019s Dao Heng Bank (in 2001) and Citigroup\u2019s consumer business in Taiwan (in 2022). DBS has more than 500 branches in India and 30 in Indonesia, and overseas markets now account for more than 30% of group profits.<\/p>\n But until Gupta, a veteran Citigroup<\/a> executive, took the reins as CEO in 2009, DBS had a reputation for being a cautious, bureaucratic lender that paid little heed to customer experience. Gupta led a far-reaching overhaul that started with company culture. He championed experimentation, collaboration, and putting customers first. He also pushed the company to invest heavily in digital technologies, declaring that DBS should \u201cact less like a bank and more like a tech company.\u201d That philosophy led to the adoption of large-scale cloud platforms and the use of data analytics and AI long before such methods were embraced by other banks. DBS rolled out mobile-first banking in Singapore, simplified the process of opening a digital account, and created seamless payment systems. In India and Indonesia DBS built \u201cdigibanks\u201d that reached millions of customers at a fraction of the cost of building a network of physical branches.\u00a0<\/p>\n The payoff was dramatic. In 2024, Gupta\u2019s final year on the job, DBS reported revenues of $17.3 billion, a fivefold increase from when he joined in 2009<\/a>. Profits last year soared to a record $8.8 billion, while return on equity has risen to 18%, up from around 7% at the beginning of Gupta\u2019s tenure, making DBS one of the world\u2019s most profitable banks.<\/p>\n Tan began her banking career at Morgan Stanley\u2019s Singapore office shortly after earning her degree from Oxford University in politics, philosophy, and economics. She focused on investment banking and wealth management and, after a stint at ING Barings, joined Citi Private Bank, where she rose quickly to become head of private banking for Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei and gained a reputation as one of Asia\u2019s savviest private bankers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gupta lured her to DBS in 2010 to scale and modernize DBS\u2019s wealth management franchise. In 2013 she was promoted to head consumer banking as well as wealth management. Tan earned praise for her relentless focus on customer experience and zeal for using data and artificial intelligence to develop innovative, more personalized financial products. Under her leadership, DBS became Asia\u2019s top private bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtesy of Tan Su Shan<\/p>\n In 2019, Gupta asked Tan to head DBS\u2019s institutional banking group, which serves large corporate and government clients and, along with wealth management and consumer banking, is the other main driver of group revenue. In that role, she pressed colleagues to figure how to apply AI and machine learning models to evaluate corporate cash flow\u2014an exercise she says helped DBS dodge a host of unprofitable deals and avoid the worst of mainland China\u2019s residential property market collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve made all our bankers go through very rigorous testing and learning around cash flow,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was the best thing we did. Now, when our bankers look at a company, they don\u2019t just see the assets\u2014\u2018Oh, nice ship, nice hotel.\u2019 No! Figure out the cash flow, honey! Because you can have the best hotel in the world, but if you haven\u2019t got the cash to pay for it, it\u2019s just a white elephant.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As head of institutional banking, Tan has been deeply involved with DBS\u2019s corporate client relationships and overseas operations, and wrestled with questions of credit risk, regulatory compliance, geopolitics, and long-term corporate strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tan hails Gupta as a \u201cgreat mentor and a tough boss.\u201d But in a wide-ranging conversation at DBS\u2019s sleek headquarters overlooking Singapore\u2019s Marina Bay, she emphasized that, as CEO, her leadership style will differ from her predecessor\u2019s\u2014in at least two important ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve told colleagues, \u2018This is going to be a volatile year, so you\u2019d better buckle up.\u2019\u201d The first is that she has elevated longtime colleague Derrick Goh to a newly created role as chief operating officer where he has broad oversight for all functions and business lines of the bank. \u201c[Piyush] and I complemented each other a lot,\u201d she says. \u201cI brought a lot of customer savvy to the relationships we have. I go deep into businesses, and I think I have a good business instinct. He had strong process-orientation, and he dared to move stuff\u2026I\u2019ve created a COO office to complement me. I want a strong COO, that guy is Derrick, to help me see things end to end, to be very process-oriented, very disciplined, to have data, to have strong governance, a resiliency framework.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The second shift is what Tan calls the \u201cone-bank initiative.\u201d \u201cPiyush organized us according to business line\u2014consumer, corporate, markets. I\u2019ve kept that but am taking a more one-bank, one-customer approach. Because our small and medium-size enterprise customer could also be a wealth customer. And we\u2019ll also be trading with our treasury and markets operations. How do we pull all that data together? How do we have the tech and ops work with the marketing message\u2014across countries, across segments, across businesses?\u201d<\/p>\n Tan believes that the new corporate structure facilitates that shift. \u201cIf a client wants to open an account somewhere else [at DBS], I shouldn\u2019t be asking for their data all over again,\u201d she says. \u201cIf we\u2019re using agentic AI for payments then I should use that in serving small enterprises as well. I want to reduce duplicative efforts. I\u2019ve strung all my ops together in one person, all my tech together in one person, in order to have that whole-of-bank journey.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She also hopes the onebank approach will help DBS identify new ways of serving clients in the \u201cwhite spaces\u201d between its traditional business lines. \u201cIt used to be my financial institutions guys would see the private equity funds without my private banking guys,\u201d she says. \u201cBut today they see them together. Because if it\u2019s a great fund, my private banking guy should be distributing that to our customers. And if the fund is investing in companies we know because we bank them, they need an expert. I want to see our people bring the whole bank to the customer.\u201d<\/p>\n Tan sees AI as a critical tool for delivering on that \u201cwhole bank\u201d vision\u2014and she is constantly badgering staff to \u201cdrink the Kool-Aid\u201d on the new technology. \u201cWith AI, you can type in, \u2018What should I say to this client I\u2019m going to see in 10 minutes? How do I bring all of DBS to the client?\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to stay in your own silo.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tan heeds her own advice. At the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in Singapore in July, she gleefully recalled \u201cgoing to a client pitch quite unprepared\u201d and peeking at her phone under the table to surreptitiously ask an AI engine for help. \u201cThe client said: \u2018Wow, you know my business so well!\u2019 So I cheated,\u201d she admitted with a grin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe day my CEO role was announced, I\u2019m in a WhatsApp group with my board,\u201d Tan recalled at the Fortune event. \u201cI get a WhatsApp saying that even the CEO\u2019s job will be replaced, or can be replaced, by AI. If I can be replaced by AI, so can everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n Tan exhorts staff to embrace AI as something that can transform them into \u201csuperhuman bankers\u201d rather than as a sinister technology that is coming for their jobs. She cites the example of service staff, who field customer queries by phone. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a great service staff. But more and more of their work is getting shifted to our \u2018digibots.\u2019 So our guys say, \u2018How do I reinvent myself?\u2019 And I say, \u2018This is great! I\u2019ve got a whole bunch of clients that aren\u2019t tied to any relationship manager. Couldn\u2019t you reinvent yourself as a relationship manager?\u2019 That\u2019s a bit of a psychological change, and it\u2019s a change in your scope of work. But it\u2019s an upgrade: You don\u2019t have to think about mundane questions. You can start thinking about constructive ideas for customers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Tan was among the first DBS executives to champion AI\u2019s potential. She remembers trying to figure out how to use IBM<\/a> Watson for wealth management in 2014. \u201cIt didn\u2019t work,\u201d she says, laughing, \u201cbut it didn\u2019t matter because we learned from it. We got a team. Those people are still with us.\u201d<\/p>\n Today DBS uses AI in myriad ways including fraud detection<\/a>, algorithmic credit-scoring, employee training<\/a>, and hyper-personalized customer engagement through AI-powered \u201cnudges.\u201d If a DBS credit-card holder spends more than usual on dining out, the bank might send a prompt suggesting the client put aside a few hundred dollars to meet savings goals. If the cardholder is spending on hotels and airlines, he might get a prompt asking if he\u2019d like to purchase DBS travel insurance. Tan estimates the bank will send more than a billion nudges to retail clients this year. In all, the bank claims to have developed more than 350 use cases for AI, and estimates that DBS\u2019s use of AI will generate economic value of more than $780 million this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[AI is] an upgrade. You don\u2019t have to think about mundane questions. You can start thinking about constructive ideas.\u201d Tan wants DBS to lean in on other complex technologies, too. Among them: blockchains, digital assets and cryptocurrencies, which she believes will take on growing significance for global companies and high-net-worth families. Tan argues geopolitical strains, especially in the relationship between the world\u2019s two largest economies, are driving demand for \u201calternative payment rails.\u201d In today\u2019s world, \u201ceverything can be weaponized, including the dollar,\u201d she says. \u201cSo in that weaponized world, how do you continue to help your clients in a regulated, anti-money-laundering kosher way?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Tan-SU-SHan-with-her-mom-and-grandmother.jpg\"\/)
From left: Tan Su Shan\u2019s grandmother, Tan\u2019s mother, and Tan at age 4.<\/p>\n\n
Tan Su Shan, CEO, DBS Group<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
Tan Su Shan<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n