Good evening, everyone, and a very warm welcome to today's presser. Apart from our Q2 financial results, which we issued at lunchtime, a few moments ago, we also announced on the stock exchange, Su Shan's promotion to Deputy CEO. A role that she will undertake in addition to her current role as head of Institutional Banking. Su Shan will also take over from Piyush as CEO when he retires next year after our AGM. Given the importance of this announcement, today's presser will be split into two parts. The first part will cover the leadership transition in DBS and will be led by our Chairman, Piyush and Su Shan. After their opening remarks, we will take questions from you. Once we have concluded this part of the presser, we will transition to the second part, which is our Q2 financial results.
Without further ado, let me pass the time to Chairman. Chairman, please.
Thank you.
Good day.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for attending this media briefing. I've actually invited the key members of our management team to attend this conference because of this important announcement, and also for you to visually look at them.
They're very good-looking.
This is the team, of course, with Su Shan, who worked with Piyush and the Board all these years that enabled DBS transformation and its results.
I thought it's important when we make this announcement that we invite them to be here.
Sure.
DBS journey in the succession has been a long journey. I remembered when I became chairman, I was asked about succession, and I said that succession starts from the day Piyush joined the bank. That indeed is factual. We've had a very robust program of preparing successors, rotating them, exposing them to different parts of the bank, and of course, evaluating their performance. This didn't just cover.
Yeah
... members of the senior team here who report to Piyush, but it's many layers down. I did talk at the time that I would like to see homegrown talent within the bank. I think over the years, we have built up a very deep bench strength in DBS. Over the years, you will have seen that many of the key positions were filled by homegrown talent within the bank. Three years ago, in 2021, Piyush informed the board.
that he would like to retire when he's 65, which is basically next year. I know he looks younger, but he'll be 65 next year. The board then decided that we really have to move the pace up and go through a selection process of who
We should appoint to lead the team.
That process required the whole board to look at the candidates. In addition to the board, to ensure that we are properly benchmarked, we actually had an independent consultant to benchmark our candidates against many top names in the industry and even outside the industry. I must say our candidates benchmarked very well. In that process, Su Shan stood out as the best, according to the consultant's report. The board had also engaged many of our internal candidates, and the board's.
Decision to appoint Su Shan was unanimous. You know, Su Shan has been a very key member of the team. She came in and actually built a very strong foundation for our wealth management. She's been a very well-respected private banker and went on to run our Consumer Banking Group. She spent the last six years running our IBG, Institutional Banking Group. She's covered the two big parts of the bank that contributes really the lion's share of the bank's income. She has performed well. In addition to that, because of the functions she performed, she's been very much involved in our technology journey. She's been very much involved in the digitization of the bank, and she's been involved in our PayLah!, our IDEAL, and many of the apps that we provide for our customers.
Of course, she's done well as the business manager for the bank, growing the bottom line in both the consumer and the institutional banking side. The board has also found that she manages people well. She gets along very well with the rest of the team. When the team members were informed of the board decision, it was well-received. I am very happy to announce, therefore, her appointment as Deputy CEO, and that she will also succeed Piyush in March next year. We wanted to be upfront so that the journey is clear, we can work well towards during the transition, and together with Piyush, they will start to plan for the future lap of DBS. Maybe I would stop here and pass on to Piyush.
Thank you, Peter. You know, 2020 was quite seminal for everybody because of COVID. It was for me, too, because it gave me a chance to reflect on, you know, what to do with my life and the next phase of my life. As Peter said, in 2021, I told the board 65 is a good time to retire. It will mean, you know, 43 years of a banking career, 15 years of having run DBS, and it would be a great time to pass the baton. I'm actually very grateful for the opportunity to have been able to lead this iconic institution and make a difference and fly the Singapore flag high over this period. Between now and March, I will have enough opportunity to talk to many of you.
There are two or three things I did want to point out. One, you know, even though I've been the face of DBS in many ways, banking is a team sport, and the most important part of this team has been the DBS Board. Within the DBS Board, actually, Peter as Chairman. I sometimes say jokingly, you know, Peter is the unsung hero of DBS' transformation journey. His leadership, whether to drive our culture, the strategy, the execution, the digital journey, et cetera, has been immense. My first message is this, that, for, you know, investors, public at large, you should take away confidence from the fact that we have tremendous continuity at the Board. Peter's done, a great job of renewing the Board in recent times.
More than half of our Board is under five years, which means that they have some runway, and they will continue to be around. Peter himself has been persuaded to stay on and make sure that there is continuity at the Board level. We are a Board-run company. You should remember that and take some solace in the fact that the Board's role has been immense and will continue to be immense. It's a big positive. The second point I wanted to make was what Peter started with, is the management team. You know, if you look at the management team of DBS, one thing stands out. It's been a very stable team. If you look at the bulk of the senior management team, it is homegrown.
If it's not homegrown, they've been around for long periods of time. Unlike large and many other institutions where there's a lot of turnover, we haven't had. We've had changes. We move people around internally, but the core of the team has stuck together for a period of time. That is an immense strength of DBS. There are some 20 of us. We have run the company almost like a kitchen cabinet working together. Frankly, even the next 200 are a very close-knit group. The capacity of this team to provide, again, continuity, direction, stability is immense. That's the second big part of what makes us a different kind of bank.
When we were going through the rubric for selection, therefore, all of the usual things we looked at, you know, who's got the track record, domain knowledge, skills. One thing that stood out is who can actually manage a bank with our kind of culture and our kind of business processes. Because we manage the bank differently. We manage it horizontally. We manage the control towers and data. We manage it with huge use of AI. We needed somebody who could actually bring that kind of aptitude and skill set to the party. Actually everybody in our internal team has that capability.
Su Shan certainly has that capability. The third point I wanted to make was, Su Shan has said we work together now for 12 years at DBS and actually a couple of years before then, she used to work with me at Citibank in the old days. Over these 12- 14 years, I found she's got some really good strengths. She's got fantastic business instinct. As a businesswoman, she's demonstrated that again and again and again. She's got great customer skills. Her customer skills, the capacity to work with customers is unrivaled, unparalleled. No one better than I am at doing that. As Peter said, she builds the team well. Bringing the team together is going to be huge. She's also been a complete integral part of our digital transformation journey.
She's been there from day one, and whether it is driving it in the consumer bank or subsequently driving it in transaction banking, she's had a critical role to play. I have every confidence that she has what it takes to lead this institution to even greater heights in days to come. Finally, my last comment is on transition. You know, we have 7-8 months of transition, which is very helpful. The way Su Shan and I have planned it is, there are obviously some areas where she will understudy me. She's not had the opportunity to be deeply involved with investor relations or even at some external and regulatory interface. There are other areas which have bearing on the future.
Our business plans for next year, our capital management strategies, our strategic direction, I'm going to let her increasingly take ownership for driving that. While I focus on making sure that we can deliver this year to its completion. We will play, you know, tag team for the next few months so that she gets every opportunity to figure out and get comfortable with all of the moving parts that are required to run a bank of this size. Like I said, this is not my farewell message because I'm around for 7- 8 months, so I'm sure I have the opportunity to talk to many of you in days to come. Meantime, let me pass on to Su Shan Tan.
Thank you for coming this evening. I am really deeply honored and humbled by this. I see this. You know, I'm very grateful for this big opportunity. I'm also very mindful that this is a huge responsibility. As a Singaporean born in Singapore, POSB was my first bank account. As a university student, DBS was where I took my first internship. When Piyush called me and said, "Hey, come join us." Subsequently, Peter also called me. I said, "Of course. Yes." It felt like a homecoming. That was 14 years ago. Since then, we've ridden all these waves. We had the Asian wave, the digital wave, the sustainability wave. As Piyush and Peter alluded, you know, the board and management were very kind. I was rotated to many different roles.
I was very, you know, I've learned a lot and helped by the wonderful teams that sits there looking very handsome and very beautiful. Very grateful to have been inspired and mentored by great team leaders, both in Piyush and Peter, and also the board and my colleagues. Everybody has told me Piyush has very big shoes to fill, and of course he does. As I said, very grateful to have him, had him as a mentor all these years. Guess what? Our shoes are different.
We wear different kinds of shoes. Our styles may be different, but some things will not change going forward. Allow me now to characterize the way forward by using four Cs. The first C is culture, the second C is customers, the third C is collaboration, and the fourth C is continuity. Culture. It is this culture that defines us. Here at DBS, our leadership team, and frankly, all our staff, we are bound by this higher purpose.
Yeah.
Deep-seated in our roots as a Development Bank of Singapore, but also with POSB's motto of being neighbors first, bankers second. It is this purpose that unites us and drives us to achieve greater heights. Second, the customer. As Piyush alluded, we've always put the customer in the front and center in the heart of everything we do. When we organize, and he talked about organizing and horizontal organizations, where different people from different units work together. We do this purely because we want the customer to have a better journey, better outcomes. The third C of collaboration. As I said, I've worked in consumer, retail, wealth, private bank. I now run IBG and GTS, its corporate commercial banking. I think I can bring a lot more of that collaboration internally. We already have a lot of collaboration.
That's what defines us. Also bringing that collaboration to the customer, bringing them a one bank solution. The last C is continuity. I think the biggest and best thing we can do to celebrate Piyush's legacy is to continue the path that he has led us on, which is one of transformation, innovation, and growth. I'm hopeful that with the continuity and the leadership of the team, myself and Peter and the board, we will continue his legacy. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. Actually, I forgot to mention that we are particularly pleased. Actually, Su Shan is the first homegrown person within the bank to succeed as CEO of DBS. We are particularly pleased that our years of robust talent management has enabled us to produce the internal successor. With that, maybe I could open the floor to questions.
We're happy to take questions, because we are live streaming, please speak into the mic, in front of you. Or we have some moving mics, just put up your hands and we'll bring one to you. Could you also state the name and the outlet you represent before you ask your question. Thank you. First question. Prisca.
Hi. Prisca from The Straits Times. Congrats so much, Su Shan, on your appointment. You mentioned that you have big shoes to fill, but they're also different shoes. How will your priorities for the bank change once you take on this role?
As Piyush said, we have eight months for this transition period. Honestly, our priorities shouldn't really change. I mean, markets will change, right? The market is very volatile, as we all know. Rates will change. Geopolitics will change. The macroeconomy will change. Generative AI will change a lot of the way we work. But what doesn't change is our culture and the collaborative spirit that enables us to be agile, that enables us to adapt, and enables us to transform when we need to. The way we continue to adapt to new technology will change, and we want to be at the forefront of that. But our culture of putting the customer first, you know, being collaborative, being purpose-driven, that won't change.
Is there a next question? Chanya.
Hi. Congrats, Su Shan, and thank you to everyone at DBS for this nail-biting session of earnings.
Why are you biting your nails? These are great earnings.
Can I just ask a little bit more for Su Shan, do you have targets that you could share for next year. It's a continuity, so I'm sure you plan everything until 2030. If I may ask Peter as well, because your partnership with Piyush is credited for the success of DBS, and now with a new leaf turning, what's your succession plan? For Piyush, I heard you are writing a memoir. When can we get to read it?
So-
Go ahead.
Chanya, setting of targets, scorecards and all that's part of the continuity of the rituals that we will continue. It's what's made us work as a team. When we're ready, we will let you know.
Well, I can tell you that, my approach to chairing the bank, working with Piyush, will not change, with Su Shan. You know, the board plays a very key role in overlooking at the strategy, but also looking at very important, the talent pool. Helping the bank shape the pool of talent, because it is the people that deliver the goods, not your advertisements and some. It's the people who deliver the goods. As Piyush will probably tell you, I have all these years been very deeply involved. I actually sit in all their talent discussions all the way two, three levels down. I probably know at least 150 high potentials in the bank. I see that as something that I will continue doing to help Su Shan continue to build the talent pool.
In terms of chairing the board, of course, to chart the future of the bank. The market's going to become more challenging. With the support of, very good board of directors, I think we should be able to give management a lot of guidance and assistance when they move into the next leg. I'm not writing a memoir. Wherever you heard it from is, wrong. Yeah, it's wrong. I'm not in the process of writing any memoir, and I have no plans to start writing a memoir. I do want to, you know, do a lot of other different things, nature and conservation being one, but no time for memoirs just yet.
Go ahead.
Hi, I'm [audio distortion] from CNA. Congratulations on-
Thank you.
In your new position. I wanted to ask, from now until next year, what are some of your key priorities, your upcoming role?
I'm gonna spend a lot of time both listening to people. Listening to stakeholders, you know, customers, internal stakeholders, external stakeholders. Also shadowing Piyush in several things that I'm not used to doing, but also spending some time with some of the support units or business units that I haven't spent as much time with.
One of the things that, as you know, we've been heavily engaged in a tech resiliency program over the last 12-15 months. Su Shan has been involved with that. In the coming months, I expect her to be able to get even more deeply immersed in things around technology, for example.
Any final questions for this segment? If there are no further questions, then thank you, everyone. We will draw this segment to a close. Thank you, Chairman and Su Shan. Piyush will stay on for the second part of the briefing, together with Sok Wee. Just give us a few moments to ready ourselves for the second part of the briefing. We will resume shortly for those of you online and in the room. Thank you. Thank you.