Singapore's DBS Bank signs up IBM's Watson to enhance the customer experience

Singapore-headquartered DBS Bank, a leading financial services group in Asia with over 250 branches across 16 markets, has announced a collaboration with IBM to harness Big Data to deliver a better customer experience through the deployment of IBM’s Watson cognitive computing platform.

DBS will also leverage on other IBM innovations to enhance the customer experience in the first such project of its kind for a bank in Asia. The portfolio of IBM solutions includes business consulting, advanced analytics, hardware and IBM Research assets, all of which augment the power of Watson.

DBS will initially apply Watson to its wealth management business to improve the advice and experience delivered to affluent customers. DBS' implementation of IBM’s Watson Engagement Advisor solution – targeted for rollout in the second half of the year – comes as the bank continues to execute on strategy to be a leading regional wealth player. The bank plans to deploy these capabilities to its other businesses over time.

Cloud-based Watson can process enormous amounts of information and can learn from each interaction at unprecedented speeds, representing a significant shift in the ability for organizations to quickly analyse, understand and respond to 'Big Data', the volumes of customer information captured by businesses that could not be analysed meaningfully in the past.

IBM's Watson will help DBS’ relationship managers make sense of large volumes of complex unstructured and structured data, including research reports, product information and customer profiles; identify connections between customers’ needs and its growing corpus of investment knowledge, and help advisors weigh various financial options available to customers, ultimately leading to further personalisation of the customer experience.

Said DBS CEO Piyush Gupta: “To remain relevant, we need to continuously innovate. At DBS, we have been on a journey to shape the future of banking, and this collaboration with IBM enables us to explore ways to better harness data, providing more precise, customised and quality solutions that correspond to our customers’ needs.”
 
Added Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Business Services: "The partnership with DBS is allowing them to anticipate and respond to market shifts, and transform the relationship between the bank and its customers using the cognitive computing power of IBM’s Watson and deep analytics combined with business consulting.”

View a video about the collaboration here.