Harvard Business School examines DBS' AI strategy and implementation in its first case study focusing on AI in an Asian bank

Authored by Feng Zhu, HBS Professor of Business Administration, the case highlights the bank's use of AI and takeaways for companies navigating technological change
Headquartered in Singapore, DBS Bank, one of Asia's leading financial services groups, embarked on a multi-year digital transformation under CEO Piyush Gupta in 2014. It was then that DBS also began experimenting with AI to drive value for the business and customers. As the bank scaled the use of AI, it developed an internal P-U-R-E framework for ethical AI governance. In 2022, DBS started experimenting with Generative AI use cases. It had to consider how best to leverage its existing capabilities and adapt its governance frameworks in deploying Gen AI to drive additional value while managing emergent risks.

Harvard Business School (HBS) has published a case study on DBS' strategy towards Artificial Intelligence (AI), highlighting the bank's use of AI. Developed over the course of eight months, the case is the first relating to AI that HBS has done on an Asian bank, and the first for a Singaporean company.

Authored by Professor Feng Zhu, MBA Class of 1958 Professor of Business Administration at HBS and Co-Chair of the Harvard Business Analytics Program, the case maps the bank's strategy and implementation as it industrialised its use of AI since 2014 to unlock business value, as well as how DBS is now approaching Generative AI.

Professor Zhu has authored over 80 articles, cases, and notes in prestigious practitioner and academic journals, including the Harvard Business Review, American Economic Review, and Management Science. His research has also won international awards, such as the Inaugural Practical Impacts Award from the INFORMS Information Systems Society, which recognises business school academics with outstanding leadership and sustained industry impact through their research.

Professor Zhu said, "The case study on DBS illustrates how AI technologies can potentially transform traditional industries, such as financial services, while driving value creation. By integrating AI into core processes, companies can unlock new potential for customer-centricity and operational excellence."

DBS has scaled the use of AI across all parts of the bank, embedding the technology into use cases to enhance customer experience and boost employee productivity. For instance, DBS leverages AI to generate hyperpersonalised nudges to enable customers to make better investment and financial planning decisions, provide relationship managers with deeper insights to better engage their customers, and develop tailored career and upskilling roadmaps to help every employee build long-term careers with the bank.

DBS CEO, Piyush Gupta, said, "AI is shaping up to be an absolute game changer in the way we live and work. DBS has been working with AI for over a decade now, and in recent years, we've managed to industrialise the use of AI across the bank. We today deploy over 800 AI models across 350 use cases, and expect the measured economic impact of these to exceed SGD 1 billion in 2025, after sequential doubling in the last few years. More importantly, the infrastructure and governance framework we established during our AI journey have put us in good stead to unlock the potential of Generative AI while managing its emergent risks."

The case will be taught in the HBS Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program, the Senior Executive Leadership Program – China, as well as executive education courses relating to AI and digital transformation.

In 2023, DBS was ranked #1 for AI Strategy Leadership in the Global Evident AI Index, an independent benchmark which ranks 50 of the largest financial institutions in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific based on their approach towards AI readiness. Overall, DBS ranked #10, and was the only Asian bank to be in the Index's Top 10. In 2024, Celent, a leading global research firm focused on technology for financial institutions, recognised DBS with a Global Model Bank Award for AI Industrialisation.

The case study can be accessed at: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=66332