SINGAPORE – DBS Bank expects to grow its assets under management (AUM) to more than $1 trillion by 2030 by hiring more staff and tapping artificial intelligence to expand its wealth business.
The AUM growth will be driven by mass-market and emerging affluent customers, also known as the retail segment, as well as the bank’s wealth segment, which spans affluent, high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.
DBS’ wealth AUM reached $492 billion in the first quarter of 2026, putting it on track to surpass its 2027 target of $500 billion more than a year ahead of schedule.
Shee Tse Koon, DBS group head of consumer banking and wealth management, said on July 14 at the bank’s office at Marina Bay Financial Centre: “We have been seeing very good traction, with clients parking more and more of their wealth with us and putting their money to work.”
South-east Asia’s largest bank by assets also plans to hire an additional 600 front-line advisers – including relationship managers and investment counsellors – and platform engineers across its six key markets by 2028 to support its wealth push. These markets are Singapore, Hong Kong, mainland China, India, Indonesia and Taiwan.
The development comes as DBS announced in June that it will open 18 new wealth centres and upgrade 36 existing wealth centres in what it called the largest physical wealth expansion of an Asian bank.
Banks such as DBS are aggressively pushing into wealth management as falling interest rates shrink net interest margins – the difference between the interest they earn on loans and the interest they pay on deposits.
To support its wealth push, DBS expects to deepen and broaden the integration and application of AI.
For example, starting in mid-August 2026, retail customers will be able to engage in generative AI-powered conversations via digiWealth – a wealth planning platform built into the DBS digibank app – to help them become savvier investors.
Regarding digiWealth, Shee said the bank will incorporate appropriate agentic AI technology with guardrails, with the aim of enhancing the digital experience of retail customers.
The Singapore bank is also embedding AI across all customer journeys – from onboarding to advisory to servicing. It is also ramping up the capability and capacity of employees, enabling them to do more for every customer.
Generative and agentic AI have uplifted customer and employee experience and continue to deliver positive outcomes, DBS added.
For example, the bank was able to onboard around 20 per cent more high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients from January to May 2026 compared with the same period a year ago, as AI adoption reduced the time needed for screening and profiling.
This enabled clients to deploy their funds much faster amid market volatility.
Sharper personalised advice and faster client access enabled by AI have also driven stronger investment engagement, with more clients diversifying their portfolios or taking up new investments beyond their original holdings.
In addition, DBS plans to ink more ecosystem partnerships, such as those with GraniteAsia, Hamilton Lane, JPMorgan and Franklin Templeton, to expand its customer reach and offer more bespoke solutions.
Shee said the bank wants to serve clients along the entire continuum of wealth, from their first $100 to their first billion.
To capture the retail segment, it has assigned personal wealth planning managers to 3.8 million retail customers since 2023. These eligible customers, aged between 18 and 68, make up roughly eight in 10 of DBS’ retail customers.
Reverse inquiries – where customers proactively reach out to their wealth planning managers – tripled in the first four months of 2026, compared with the same period a year earlier.
Earlier in July, local counterpart OCBC Bank rolled out AI avatars and said it will hire 600 additional relationship managers for its consumer banking business over the next three years.
