By Kimberley Kao


Singapore authorities won't extend a six-month restriction it slapped on DBS after the lender suffered a string of banking-service disruptions.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said the timeout, which was imposed in November last year and expired today, was aimed at ensuring DBS "kept a sharp focus on restoring the resilience of its digital banking services." DBS has made substantive progress in addressing the shortcomings highlighted by the service outages and improved its system resilience, MAS said.

The six-months penalty came after DBS experienced multiple digital-banking disruptions last year that affected millions of customers.

DBS, Southeast Asia's biggest bank, was barred from acquiring new business ventures and making "non-essential" IT changes for six months, in effect stopping the bank from rolling out new technology initiatives until it proves its systems are in order.

DBS said in its February earnings release that it cut its Chief Executive Piyush Gupta's 2023 salary, along with that of other senior management, as part of its accountability for the digital disruptions.

MAS said DBS will carry on with some longer-term measures, and that it will continue to closely monitor the bank's progress.

The central bank maintained an additional capital requirement it imposed on DBS for the disruptions, a multiplier of 1.8 times to its risk-weighted assets for operational risk.

"The multiplier of 1.8 times will be lifted when MAS is satisfied that DBS Bank has demonstrated the ability to maintain service availability and reliability, and handle any disruptions effectively," it said.


Write to Kimberley Kao at kimberley.kao@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-30-24 0625ET