MAS Imposes Bans on DBS Following Distruptions
(1 November 2023 - Singapore) The Monetary Authority of Singapore has barred DBS from acquiring new business ventures or shrinking its branch and ATM network as part of an effort to restore the resilience of its digital banking services following a series of disruptive outages.
In May, Singapore's central bank imposed additional capital requirements on DBS, following widespread outages in March and a subsequent disruption to its digital banking and ATM services two months later. The bank was further reprimanded this month following a data centre meltdown that hit online and payment services.
A six-month hiatus on non-essential IT services has also been imposed following an independent investigation into the March 2023 downtime which identified shortcomings in system resilience, incident management, change management and technology risk governance and oversight.
MAS has directed DBS Bank to suspend all changes to the bank’s IT systems except for those related to security, regulatory compliance and risk management for six months as it embarks on a two-year technology resiliency roadmap to address the shortcomings.
Ho Hern Shin, deputy managing director, MAS, says: “DBS must put in place immediate measures to ensure service reliability while it continues to invest in the 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.”
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