SINGAPORE — DBS Group, the largest bank in Southeast Asia, saw its CEO, Piyush Gupta, receive a 13.2% increase in annual earnings, with his compensation package totalling S$15.38 million last year after the bank reported a record profit and return on equity (ROE).

Gupta’s earnings consisted of a salary of S$1.5 million, a cash bonus of S$5.77 million, and deferred remuneration in cash and shares of S$8.04 million.

In addition, Gupta received non-cash benefits, including club membership, a car, and a driver, worth S$80,529. Gupta’s total compensation in 2021 was S$13.6 million, a significant jump from 2020 when his pay fell due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

DBS reported a surge in net profit by 20% to S$8.19 billion last month, driven by higher interest rates.

The bank also achieved a new high on ROE of 15%, up from 12.5% in the previous year, despite challenges such as escalating geopolitical tensions, high inflation, and slowing external demand in key markets like Singapore and Hong Kong.

DBS delivered “solid financial performance and continued delivery against key scorecard goals,” according to a joint letter by Gupta and DBS Chairman Peter Seah in the bank’s annual report.

The bank has been undergoing digitalisation since 2017, and DBS collaborated with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on two trial applications in 2022. One application involved trading tokenised assets, while the other was to distribute purpose-bound vouchers using programmable money and retail central bank digital currencies.

Gupta emphasized the need to continue strengthening DBS’ technology, particularly in areas such as cloud computing and site reliability engineering, to improve scalability, automation, and speed to market.

DBS has been successfully increasing its digital customer base, with digitally engaged customers bringing in more than twice the income on average than non-digital customers and costing less to serve, according to Gupta.

DBS said it was optimistic about its loan pipeline and expected its ROE to remain comfortably above 15% barring any unexpected shocks to the global economy.

“We expect that as our digital transformation becomes more pervasive, an ROE of 15% is sustainable if interest rates do not return to the unusually low levels seen during most of the past decade,” said Gupta in the annual report.

Digitalisation of DBS

The bank has been undergoing digitalisation since 2017, and DBS collaborated with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on two trial applications in 2022.

One application involved trading tokenised assets, while the other was to distribute purpose-bound vouchers using programmable money and retail central bank digital currencies.

Furthermore, DBS Bank is the first Singapore bank to provide service under the linkage between India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore’s PayNow, allowing faster and more cost-efficient cross-border remittances between the two countries.

With 650,000 Indians residing in Singapore, including non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin, the linkage of UPI and PayNow is expected to benefit the Indian diaspora in Singapore, including migrant workers and students, by facilitating the instantaneous and low-cost transfer of money from Singapore to India and vice versa.

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