DBS continues to find new ways to use technology to
provide better service delivery and efficiency - and most importantly,
to allow our people to focus their time and energies on serving
customers. This is increasingly important as business volumes grow, the
level of complexity in our industry increases and our regional presence
expands. For example, a new system for on-screen cheque verification by
a central processing unit has increased productivity and freed branch
staff to concentrate on marketing new products. Another advance improves
and centralises the age-old process of cheque cutting, using the latest
workflow and imaging technologies. Additional services available to our
cyberbanking customers include bidding for Certificates of Entitlement
for the purchase of automobiles, fixed deposit placement and
instantaneous credit card enquiries.
The Customer Profile System launched in 1998 uses
state-of-the-art software to capture historical information about DBS
customers in a secure environment - available only to authorised banking
officers - at the click of a mouse. Quick and complete access to
information, and enhanced communications capabilities help us to support
our operations throughout Asia and provide the same level of service in
our subsidiaries that customers have come to expect in Singapore. During
the course of 1998 we were also active participants in the
implementation of the new, national real-time gross settlements system
introduced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and improved our
back-office processes for better control of the receipt and release of
funds.
Risk management
capabilities are also being consolidated into a centralised group to
create, within DBS as a whole, a panoramic view - across products,
geography and counterparties of assets and liabilities on and off the
balance sheet - of the risks we deal with every day. During the year, a
credit scoring system and a data warehouse to facilitate credit analysis
were rolled out internally as part of this effort. We implemented
methodologies to estimate the potential credit exposure of off-balance
sheet instruments through statistical analysis. On market risk
management, we extended our Daily Earnings at Risk (DEaR) reporting
beyond Head Office to cover major overseas branches and subsidiaries. We
also put in place a system to monitor compliance with DEaR-based limits
which ensures that risk-takers do not exceed the aggregate risk and
concentration parameters set by senior management.
Please click here for
further details of our risk management organisation and our operating
philosophy for monitoring and managing risk.
