SINGAPORE – Outgoing DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta would have done things differently if he were given another chance to build the bank’s technology capabilities.
Mr Gupta’s 15-year tenure as head honcho saw DBS go all in to develop tech systems that transformed much of the bank’s operations.
DBS, South-east Asia’s largest bank, started its digital transformation in 2014, the same year it launched its PayLah! mobile wallet, that has since found a home in the smartphones of many customers. This was followed by other milestones, such as eliminating physical tokens for corporate transactions.
But the bank has also had several disruptions in recent years, including a two-day outage to its digital banking services in November 2021.
Those seemed uppermost in Mr Gupta’s mind when he told the Singapore FinTech Festival on Nov 7 that in regard to digital capabilities: “I did not actually think enough, and hard enough, about the operational complexity that comes with a distributed microservice architecture”.
In microservices, software is composed of independent units that communicate with one another.
“So how do you actually focus and dial up a lot more on resiliency while you’re pushing the innovation and speed agenda? I would do it differently, if I were to do it again,” he said in a dialogue with Monetary Authority of Singapore chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty.
Setbacks are necessary for progress, though, as Mr Gupta knows all too well. Before joining DBS, he spent 27 years at Citi, except for a one-year stint as a tech entrepreneur in 2000 when the internet was taking off.
When the dot.com bubble burst, Mr Gupta had to pull the plug on his venture and subsequently found himself feeling lost.
“I left a very thriving, flourishing career. Apart from the loss of face,