DBS has received a public slap on the wrist from its regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, after an outage of its digital services in November.
Although there is no fine, the MAS has imposed an additional capital requirement on the bank. DBS is required to apply a multiplier of 1.5 times to its risk-weighted assets for operational risk, equating to an additional S$930 million ($692 million) in additional regulatory capital.
It amounts to an embarrassing, if financially mild, rebuke.
The outages lasted for a 40-hour period from November 23 to 25 and rendered many people unable to access the digital services that have become essential to personal banking at DBS, as at many banks now. The length of the disruption was significant, and MAS noted this in a statement on Monday, February 7.
“MAS noted deficiencies in DBS Bank’s incident management and recovery procedures to restore its digital banking services to a normal state, resulting in the prolonged duration of the disruption,” it said.
The regulator has also ordered DBS to appoint an independent expert (likely a big four consultant, Euromoney understands) to conduct a comprehensive review of the incident, including the bank’s recovery actions.
