The Monetary Authority of Singapore has prohibited DBS from pursuing new business ventures or reducing its branch and ATM network in an effort to improve the resilience of its digital banking services following a series of disruptive outages.
In May, Singapore’s central bank enforced additional capital requirements on DBS after it experienced widespread outages in March, along with further disruptions to its digital banking and ATM services in May. The bank faced further scrutiny this month following a data center meltdown that affected its online and payment services.
A six-month halt on non-essential IT services has been implemented following an independent investigation into the March 2023 downtime, which uncovered deficiencies in system resilience, incident management, change management, and technology risk governance and oversight.
The MAS has instructed DBS Bank to suspend all modifications to the bank’s IT systems, except for those concerning security, regulatory compliance, and risk management, for six months. This period will allow the bank to implement a two-year technology resiliency roadmap aimed at addressing these issues.
Ho Hern Shin, deputy managing director of the MAS, stated, “DBS must put in place immediate measures to ensure service reliability while it continues to invest in longer-term efforts to bolster its operational resilience. We have imposed this six-month pause on the bank to give it the space to take the actions needed to maintain customer trust.”