Transcription
Um, so it was originally the Development Bank of Singapore, but I have to say, in addition to being Southeast Asia's largest bank, I see here it's the world's best bank, the safest bank, the top for customer experience, customer service. I just think, how do you build on that? You've been in the role since March. How's it going? Is it just, you know?
>> So Diane, let me tell you, I joined in 2010. In 2010, you were the worst bank.
>> Okay. Worst bank for customer service, worst bank for the longest queues, worst bank for product. I mean, it all worked. Um, and and really it was the team under my my my previous boss, the previous CEO of DBS. And we we we put a lot of we we worked really hard. Um, as a Singaporean, I don't know if any of you have you ever flown Singapore Airlines? Oh, you have?
>> Oh my gosh, the enthusiasm. Okay. So, we were all marshaled to Singapore Airlines headquarters by the airport and taught how do you offer good service quality, SQ as they called it. And so that was our first learning was how do you give good service and how do you how how are you respectful, easy to deal with and dependable?
>> Reed, red as we as we pass out sick bags when people look at their bank account. I don't know. I guess it translates pretty well. Um, look, I I want to ask, you know, first of all, congratulations on being number one on the list. I'd be remiss not to ask how your peers reacted to that, by the way, since I know that you're known and beloved throughout Asia. How did that go?
>> Shock. Yeah.
>> I think uh surprise, certainly from my part, surprise from my kids was like, what? Um, but um uh, you know, look, it's it's a great honor. I'm humbled by it. Um, didn't expect it at all. And honestly, the word "powerful," I, you know, I don't know how I feel about the word powerful. Um, I like the word impactful. Um, and um, I don't feel very powerful to be honest. I I I just think um, it's the team, right? It it really is is the team that gets stuff done. Uh, and it's my job as a CEO to be the chief energy officer, right? To give energy to the team and to make sure that everyone is headed in the right direction and and and we're learning together and when we're doing new stuff together and we're dealing with problems together and we're taking responsibility together and and and we're owning up to mistakes and taking accountability.
When I was doing my research, you have wonderful acronyms. I feel like you're a student of leadership, you know, in addition to the fact that um, DBS, the D is no longer Development for you. You've called it something else.
>> Well, um, I often joke that the D should stand for Digital, digital bank, or Data bank. But you know, in this very bifurcated world where you have so much volatility and people are so bifurcated in their views, um, we wanted to be a dependable bank. In Chinese, people say, right, when there's wind and the storm, you see the true uh loyalty of your your your partnership. Um, and so we wanted to be that dependable partner through thick and thin. We wanted to be digital. We wanted to be disruptive, you know, using new technologies. And we wanted to be a diversifier bank, you know, because you kind of need to diversify. You need to diversify your supply chain, your counterparts, your currencies, your demand, your supply, your your interoperability of your tech, etc. So, we wanted to be that bank that if you weren't banking with me, you should think about it because I'm your risk diversifier.
>> Well, they they will now. And you know, one of the things I should mention is that you started pretty soon after that, I believe, was Liberation Day.
>> Yeah. Day one.
>> Day one. So day one you have Liberation Day and you are a bridge among other things. Um, your largest, you know, China, India, Indonesia. How is that going for you? So Asia um is 60% of the global growth. Um, and I know I'm in the US and US is the world's biggest capital markets, but when it comes to global trade, um, actually trade within Asia, trade between Asia and Europe, Asia and the GCC is actually growing. Um, and so the two financial hubs that we're in is Singapore and Hong Kong. And then the big growth markets are China, India, Indonesia. We're in all these markets and they don't tend to move together. When India's good, China's in a slowdown. When China recovers, India may or may not slow down, but it gives us a good base. It's a huge market. It's growing. It's pretty young, especially in India and Indonesia and Vietnam. And it's very digital. So, there's been a lot of digital leapfrogging happening in a lot of our major markets.
>> So, how are you helping your customers cope with some of the fallout from the new trade environment? Is that impacting you at all?
>> Diversify. Absolutely. Okay, so first order impact was Liberation Day and then everybody had to digest, oh my god, how much more do I have to pay? Um, and if you're only getting your supplies from China, you diversify. So, China plus one, China plus N. I have a client who makes Christmas trees, uh, from Shenzhen.
>> Mhm.
>> And you can imagine he sells to Walmart and Target and all the, you know, big great companies here. He had to diversify. So he moved a lot of his production to Surabaya in Indonesia and he also sells now to Europe. So that's just one example. You also diversify your demand if you only sell to the US. Well, you have to diversify. Um, and so producers are now finding new markets in the GCC, within India. Taiwanese producers are going to Taiwan. Um, um, China, you know, China, Taiwan, China and sorry, China and India historically are not that close. But I think this might actually create more um opportunities for Chinese and Indian companies to do more together, certainly on the supply chain.
>> Are you seeing that right now? China and India getting closer together among?
>> It'll take time to build the trust, but I the opportunities are there, uh, certainly from a supply chain perspective. We're already seeing one or two good partnerships. There's um, uh, Shanghai Auto now partnering, uh, through their that their ownership of the MG car with, uh, JSW, which is a big conglomerate in India. Um, and there will be more. You know, there's a lot of solar panels being imported as well from China, uh, to India. So if that grows, the opportunities could be tremendous.
>> You know, one of the things about DBS is it really has been a pioneer and a leader. I think you mentioned digital, certainly with AI. One of you, when you spoke to Fortune earlier this year, I loved um, your anecdote. First of all, you have a WhatsApp group with your board, which I thought.
>> Okay, let's stop right there with the WhatsApp group. But then they said even the CEO could be replaced by AI. So, them marching orders for you. But what have you done to really make generative AI sort of the the foundation of the bank? I think that's something that a lot of people can learn from.
>> Well, the first thing and the hardest thing to do is to get your data into a data lake. A lot of banks, corporates have legacy data. So, did we um, and it was the hard work creating a big data lake. We call it, you know, a AD for DBS, but um, advanced analytics for DBS. Really, it's creating metadata so that you can then have protocols and reusable models and and you have uh governance and process that that is common. So that's important. That takes years. Then you learn to create machine learning models. That doesn't come intuitively, by the way. You have to learn. And we tried to make learning fun. So we we we adopted AWS's DeepRacer. I didn't know how to do machine learning, but through using in the DeepRacer car.
>> Are you a gamer?
>> Um, I learned to be a gamer. I'm not naturally a gamer, but I had to learn to be a gamer to understand how, you know, you could cut bits of code to make your car turn right or left when you need to, and then you can try and win a race. I didn't win, of course, but I learned that it was really that the machine can learn really quickly. Um, and then you just have to do these experiments. And I still remember my favorite experiment was when we realized we were losing a lot of our customers to the fintech companies on foreign exchange. Right? TransferWise, new, um, Wise, Revolut, Monzo. So they were getting a lot of our FX flows from our members.
>> So I asked the dealers, hey, why are we losing all this market share? And they said, Susan, very easy, it's all about the rates. So if I cut the rates, we're going to get them the the clients back. Yeah, absolutely. Then I thought that seemed too easy. And we thought we had all these machine learning, we should try and test them out. So the the the Uber equivalent in Asia is called Grab.
>> And on Valentine's Day, Grab sent me a message and it said, "I miss you. I love you." And my husband didn't send me a card that Valentine's Day, but Grab did. I'm like, "Interesting." And of course, I opened the EDM and I I I looked at the coupon. So I said, "How about I miss you because these customers used to deal with us and they went away?" And I remember my dealers cringed like, "No, no, no, no, no. That's just too emotional. And I miss no, this is facts we're talking about." Like, try. So just to humor me, they put it in the machine. They had some messages that went, "Great rates." You know, and they had me messages that said, "I miss you." Guess which one worked better?
>> Miss you.
>> I love that. There you go. Connecting on an emotional level.
>> So, and and you have to take out the human bias when you're doing this machine learning. And the machine helps to take out because everyone, all of us are biased. I was biased with something. The dealers were biased with something else. But the machine takes away the biases, right? And it really tests and learns. So that's how we learn. We learn. Honestly, I learn best by doing. Learn by your mistakes. Learn by doing. And um, that's what we did. We started, you know, NLP in 2014, very early on. And it was so hard in those days, and we failed. We failed, we failed. And you know what? It was all that failures in the early days that taught us how to do how to do this in a in a faster, better way.
I want to get into some more about your background, but um, talk a little bit first about crypto, digital assets. Anything you want to say on that front? It's been very volatile and it's something that a lot of bankers have sort of kept at an arm's length. How do you feel about it?
>> So, we started custody for crypto in 2021. Yeah. And you know why? Because we found a lot of our, well, in in at Christmas 2019, I looked at all the credit card payments and I realized a lot of the kids were buying Bitcoin through their parents' credit cards.
>> Oh, that sounds dangerous.
>> Yeah. And it was really, it was like almost a billion dollars in one month. I was like, what the hell? What is this? And then um, my friends who had bought them as as oh, they were given, oh, there was an organization where the lady boss gave everybody one Bitcoin. It was worth $70. And and when she gave them all one.
>> Then of course, guess what? Nobody could remember their password or the crypto key. So when it got to $30,000, I get all these calls in panic like, what the hell? I lost my password. How do I get it back? Then I realized, we realized together that there was a use case to create a safe custody for crypto or for whatever tokenized assets, digital assets. So we created that custody. So it came from this realization that if you are a bank and you're supposed to be the custodian of your client's assets, their financial assets, if you don't know how to custodize a tokenized asset, you're going to lose this game long term. So we created the custody. After we did that, our clients said, "Hey, heck, why don't I just go on-ramp, off-ramp with you? That means buy and sell digital assets with you because I don't want to have to open an account with FTX or whatever. Don't know if they'll last." So, we said, "Oh, okay. Never done an exchange before, but talked to the regulator." They said,
>> You go where the customer goes.
>> I go where the customer goes. So, that's what we did. And then we thought we'll tokenize, learn to tokenize as well. So, that was the journey. We started with the custody, started the exchange, and then we started the tokenization journey. And it's been honestly, it's been patchy because I think regulators are very schizophrenic. They want to do it, don't want to do it, want to do it, don't want to do it. So you just have to go with the flow. So I feel like I'm we're now into a lightning round here, but I'm curious about you were nominated Member of Parliament, you know, about a decade ago, I feel like, uh, which is where you're basically a non-partisan member of the Singapore Parliament. And now you're in this um, economic strategic review committee on global competitiveness. What do you learn from experience in the public sector because we're always talking about what the private sector can bring to public, but not as much about what public can bring to private? Any quick thoughts there?
>> So I learned what it meant to be a Congresswoman, right? And I learned that a lot of what happens in parliament, and I guess here in Congress, it's quite staged, but the real negotiation happens at in the tea room after during recess, right? Um, but at least, you know, from from the Singapore perspective, I also learned that they were very open to feedback. That was great. I I sent all my speeches in before and I thought they might vet it, they might say no, don't say this, don't say that. Absolutely not. They were just, bring it on. You don't agree? Just bring it on. So that was good. I I I felt that we had a voice and that was useful. Not everything that that we suggested was was taken on, to be honest. It took some of the the issues took time. Like I I asked for egg freezing in 2014 and didn't happen.
>> Egg freezing for all. What was the egg freezing that you asked?
>> So, um, we didn't allow egg freezing unless, um, the woman had a sort of a a very bad disease, you know, like a life life-threatening disease. Um, and I was arguing for egg freezing, uh, for for for women before they got married with the view that they could use it after they got married, um, if in case, you know, they couldn't get pregnant naturally. Um, that, you know, didn't go down so well at first.
>> Well, you can always.
>> When I suggested it, but I think gradually, you know, the society opened up.
>> People will change. So, you know, somebody just bid $15,000, I believe, to have dinner with you. So it's kind of a warm buffet like.
>> Me and my husband just.
>> You and your husband, which which you do a lot of great work as a family, by the way, in Cambodia. So I should mention that. But in our final minute here, if you were to give advice to this person who wants some time with you right now, and what you've done at DBS and what you intend to do, what would you say?
>> Well, my advice would be, you know, life is not in a straight line. Sometimes you have to take one step back to take two steps forward. And uh, so when the going is good, don't lose your head. When the going is bad, don't lose your heart.
>> I love that. I think that's that's fabulous. And um, I think the other thing I just want to say quickly with regard to parenting advice, because I was trolling your kids and they all seem to be both of them seem to be doing very well as a family. I think that collective giving that you do is very powerful. Anything you want to say very quickly about that because it seems to be part of your life?
>> As as a mom, and I know a lot of you here are moms. There's nothing more powerful than doing that bonding with your kids where you're all collectively doing good together. That's been a family thing for us. Every year we do one trip together. We go to Cambodia and we do this, you know, activity. It's it could be cataract. Um, it could be cataract operations for for for for the people who can't see or building a school or something. And it really bonds the family. Highly recommended.
>> That most powerful woman in Asia. It's a great honor to have you here. Thank you very much, Susan.
>> And to be continued. Thank you.