DBS said it is strengthening system resilience and tightening processes around change management.
“As these improvements are more structural in nature, they will take time to fully implement and are expected to be completed in 12 to 24 months,” it added.
“With these changes, customers can expect to see concrete improvements in both service availability and service recovery in the coming months and over the longer term.”
For instance, DBS said it will set new service availability targets for three key digital banking services – balance enquiry, overseas payments and domestic payments.
“Should one of these services become temporarily unavailable on a particular digital channel, the bank will ensure that the service is available on an alternative digital channel,” DBS said.
“The bank pledges to limit downtime, where each service is completely unavailable across all digital channels, to no more than an average of 1.5 hours per month over a three-month period. This is a commitment DBS aims to deliver on within the next six months, and continuously improve on.”
According to MAS requirements, any unscheduled downtime for a critical service affecting a bank’s operations or service to customers must not exceed four hours within any 12-month period.
DBS added that it will maintain its network of physical touchpoints. These include branches, self-service banking machines such as ATMs and video teller machines, as well as POSB Cash-Points at merchant outlets including Giant, Cold Storage, 7-Eleven and SingPost.
If needed, branches will be opened on Sundays and public holidays as an alternative service channel, it said.
DBS CEO Piyush Gupta apologised for the digital disruptions, adding that the bank will set aside a “special budget” of S$80 million (US$58.4 million) to enhance system resiliency.
“We are deeply sorry for the digital disruptions. Over the years, DBS has focused on digital transformation so as to make banking simple, seamless and effortless. However, we acknowledge that we must now do better to deliver on this, and are taking a multitude of actions across technology governance, people/leadership, systems and processes,” he added.
“Our assurance to customers is that they can expect these actions to deliver concrete improvements in the near term and over time. In particular, apart from complying with regulatory requirements on system availability, we are committing to additional targets we are setting for ourselves on ensuring high service availability as well.”