DBS Chairman Apologizes for Service Disruption, Special Committee to Investigate

SINGAPORE: DBS CEO Piyush Gupta and Chairman Peter Seah issued an apology during the bank’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday (Mar. 31), expressing embarrassment over the recent digital banking outage that affected about 50% of customers. The disruption, which lasted for 11 hours on Wednesday (Mar. 29), impacted DBS’s Digibank and PayLah services.

At the AGM, Gupta acknowledged the severity of the issue, noting that despite previous efforts to enhance recovery protocols, the incident was a sobering experience for Singapore’s largest bank. He said, “As a well-known digital and technology bank, this embarrasses us. We are committed to doing better. Ensuring uninterrupted digital banking services 24/7 has been our key priority. Unfortunately, we fell short and are truly sorry.”

DBS Chairman Peter Seah also addressed the matter, bowing to shareholders and expressing his regret over the “very unfortunate and disappointing” disruption. Seah announced that he would lead a special board committee to conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of the outage, underscoring the gravity of the situation.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) deemed the incident “unacceptable” and has instructed DBS to investigate the root cause. This marks the second major service disruption DBS has experienced in 16 months, following a previous outage that required the bank to set aside $930 million in regulatory capital.