What DBS Did Better than Most Banks

One thing DBS Bank did to outperform other banks was to spot trends before their competitors. By dedicating teams to assessing trends and observing the market, DBS Bank made earlier investments and had the first-mover advantage in transformation work.

DBS Bank’s former Chief Data and Transformation Officer, Paul Cobban, offers three principles for competitive advantage:

1. Spend quality time with subject matter experts and predict trends
2. Determine which trends will be most relevant to your customers and business
3. Use data to support your experimentation and continually align with it

By continuing iterations of market predictions, Paul fostered a collaborative employee experience which resulted in the lowering of barriers to innovation programs.

Introducing a platform operating model was key to removing frictions between strategic leaders and technology teams, which ultimately gave them a shared strategy, budget, and KPI to work towards.