CEO of Southeast Asia's largest bank says AI adoption is already paying off: ‘It’s not hope, it’s now’

SINGAPORE - Amid fears of an artificial quality bubble, overmuch has been made of caller reports suggesting that AI has yet to make returns for companies investing billions into adopting the tech. 

But that's not what the main enforcement of Southeast Asia's largest slope is seeing — she says her steadfast is already reaping the rewards of its AI initiatives, and it's lone conscionable the beginning. 

"It's not hope. It's now. It's already happening. And it volition get adjacent better," DBS CEO Tan Su Shan told CNBC  on the sidelines of Singapore Fintech Week, erstwhile asked astir the committedness of AI adoption.  

DBS has been moving to instrumentality artificial quality crossed its slope for implicit a decade, which helped hole its interior information analytics for caller waves of generative and agentic AI. 

Agentic AI is simply a benignant of artificial quality that relies connected information to proactively marque autarkic decisions, program and execute tasks autonomously, with minimal quality oversight.

Tan expects AI adoption to bring DBS an wide gross bump of much than 1 cardinal Singapore dollars (about $768 million) this year, compared to SG$750 cardinal successful 2024. That appraisal is based connected astir 370 AI usage cases powered by implicit 1,500 models passim its business. 

"The proliferation of generative AI has been transformative for us," Tan said, adding that the institution was experiencing a "snowballing effect" of benefits acknowledgment to instrumentality learning. 

A large country successful which DBS has applied AI is successful its fiscal services to organization clients, with AI utilized to cod and leverage information astir clients successful bid to amended contextualize and personalize offerings. 

According to Tan, this has resulted successful "faster and much resilient" teams. The CEO believes that these uses of AI person contributed to a caller uptick successful the bank's deposit maturation arsenic compared to competitors'.

The institution also precocious launched a recently enhanced AI-powered adjunct for firm clients known arsenic "DBS Joy," which assists clients with unsocial firm banking queries astir the clock. 

Despite Tan's beardown convictions astir AI, caller grounds suggests that galore companies are struggling to crook their AI investments into tangible profits. 

MIT released a report successful July that recovered 95% of 300 publically disclosed AI initiatives, encompassing generative AI investments of $30–$40 billion, had failed to execute existent returns. 

However, astatine slightest successful the banking sector, determination are signs that the tides are turning. 

While DBS doesn't differentiate spending successful generative AI from different in-house investments, different large banks person precocious offered this comparison. 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stated successful an interrogation with Bloomberg TV past period that the slope is already breaking adjacent connected its astir $2 cardinal of yearly investments successful AI adoption. That represents "just the extremity of the iceberg," helium added.

Those expectations are shared by DBS, which plans to proceed to accelerate its AI improvement to go an AI-powered bank.

The eventual goal, according to Tan, is for its generative AI to make into a trusted fiscal advisor for clients, including retail users who are expected to interact with personalized AI agents done the DBS banking app. 

The slope already has implicit 100 AI algorithms that analyse users' information to supply them with personalized "nudges," specified arsenic alerts connected incoming shortfalls, merchandise recommendations, and different insights. 

While DBS whitethorn already beryllium reaping rewards from its AI adoption, Tan acknowledged that it volition necessitate continued investments, not lone successful capital, but successful the clip needed to reskill employees. 

The institution has launched respective AI reskilling initiatives crossed departments this twelvemonth and has adjacent deployed a generative AI-powered coaching tool to enactment these efforts. 

This volition assistance the institution automate mundane enactment and refocus its unit connected gathering and maintaining human-to-human relationships with customers, alternatively than reducing headcount, Tan said. 

"We're not freezing hiring, but it does mean reskilling. And that's a journey. It's a never-ending travel ... a changeless evolution."