The latest disruption comes about a month after a day-long outage of DBS’ online banking platforms.
The Mar 29 incident prompted the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to issue a statement saying the disruption was “unacceptable” and that the bank has fallen short of the regulator’s expectations.
“MAS will take the commensurate supervisory actions against DBS after gathering the necessary facts,” it said then.
At the bank’s annual general meeting on Mar 31, chief executive Piyush Gupta apologised for the service disruption, calling the incident “sobering”.
“Ensuring uninterrupted digital banking services 24/7 has been our key priority,” he said. “Unfortunately, we fell short and I’m truly sorry. Our customers and our shareholders deserve better.”
Chairman Peter Seah announced at the meeting that a special board committee had been set up to investigate the outage. He added that the bank will engage external experts to look into the matter.
In November 2021, DBS was similarly hit by a major disruption that lasted two days. MAS imposed additional capital requirements on DBS in the wake of that incident. The lender had to apply a multiplier of 1.5 times to its risk-weighted assets for operational risk – translating to S$930 million in additional regulatory capital.
Earlier this week, the bank reported a stronger-than-expected 43 per cent jump in first-quarter profit to a new high from a year earlier on a higher net interest margin, sustained business momentum and resilient asset quality.
