Reflecting on 2024, what were your bank’s major milestones from an operational perspective and how did you achieve them? Conversely, what were the setbacks and challenges encountered along the way, and what measures were taken to surmount them?

Following the successful integration of our Privilege Reserve (PVR) and Private Bank (PB) client segments in 2023, our focus in 2024 was on deepening client engagement, especially for the significant number of PVR clients who are new to our PB platform. These newly integrated clients are now able to access the full suite of private banking products and advisory services, including our discretionary portfolio management (DPM) offerings and wealth planning solutions.

To enable them to fully understand our suite of solutions, and to support this group of clients in building a tailored wealth management strategy to grow and protect their wealth, we adopted a multi-prong approach to step up on our engagement with them, via dedicated relationship managers (RMs) and various communication channels. Concerted efforts are invested to ensure that each client’s risk profile and wealth goals are properly assessed, and advisory advice and solutions customised to their needs and preferences.

More than 90 per cent of our PB clients are also satisfied users of our retail bank’s digital banking platform, UOB TMRW. This integration catalysed our plan to accelerate the harmonising of our digital client journey between our consumer and private banking franchises.

Given the increasing sophistication of digital channels and other client-facing innovations, how do you maintain an equilibrium between high-touch client services and cutting-edge technologies?

Our approach remains grounded in UOB’s omni-channel strategy. We offer our clients the option of how and when they wish to be engaged, from the simpler day-to-day banking services and enquiries, to the more complex investment advisory. Many clients have shown a preference to be engaged digitally or via self-service for simpler, straight-forward enquiries and processes, while the need for in-person interaction increases with more complicated conversations.

We also seek to continuously refine and personalise the different services offered on each of these channels, to provide greater convenience and flexibility for our clients.

As a result of evolving regulatory requirements, private banks are reviewing their compliance systems and processes. What are the current operational challenges posed by the regulations in the jurisdictions in which you operate, and what can be done to effectively address and overcome these challenges?

One challenge is to balance the standardisation of processes and systems across the region with the group’s practices and risk appetite, while ensuring adherence with local regulations in each jurisdiction, in an efficient, effective and timely manner.

This requires close partnership across the entire bank, including business, control and compliance functions, with clear delineation of business risk appetites, so as to provide adequate time to implement any necessary changes in procedures and controls. Training to all staff across the service chain is also critical to drive consistent understanding of the regulations and operational considerations to ensure that regulatory requirements are executed correctly.

Operational resilience is at the top of private bank’s minds and cyber resilience has also moved up the agenda in recent years. How does your bank effectively manage third-party dependencies and enhance the operational resilience against the failure of third-party IT solutions?

We have a robust and holistic framework to assess and ensure operational resilience across the entire bank. This involves identifying critical business activities that can impact a client, like the crucial downstream processes and various internal and external parties within the entire service ecosystem, whom we have dependencies on.

Once the above elements are mapped out, we will analyse potential risk factors and critical failure points, then identify controls or measures to manage or mitigate probability of occurrence or potential impact of failures. Recovery plans are regularly tested and updated to ascertain effectiveness in upholding operational resilience.

Separately, our omni-channel approach for client engagement also helps to ensure cyber resiliency. We provide multiple touch points for customer engagement, both in-person and digitally, offering alternative channels for client servicing in the event that a channel is unavailable.

With more discussions surrounding data utilisation, banks have developed a profound appreciation for the worth of the data they possess. How do you identify, correct, and maintain data within the bank, and how are you leveraging data to enhance revenues and simultaneously enhance the quality of customer services and offerings?

We are prudent when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in the data analytics aspects, due to the potential risks, such as hallucination, bias, lack of accountability and transparency in outcomes. Hence we are selective on our use cases. We have started and achieved success in a series of proof-of-concepts focused on risk management scenarios, where use cases and outcomes tend to be more straightforward to define, track and refine.

Our plan for 2025 is to leverage these successfully validated AI models to equip our staff with relevant information to augment their decision-making process, based on a set of identified risk scenarios.

Within the bank, we have established strong governance of the data and AI models that we adopt, ensuring that they are aligned to the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency framework and Project MindForge. This is part of our longer-term plan to explore and adopt AI technology for meaningful and sustainable business outcomes, and in a responsible manner.

Technology companies eyeing the financial services sector have the potential to disrupt the industry. Are tech and fintech companies potential competitors or partners? How are partnerships between banks and tech companies reshaping the industry?

In recent years, fintechs have evolved from being a threat, to becoming complementary partners to the finance industry. Each player within the ecosystem, such as fintechs, big tech companies, and banks, has their respective core capabilities and possess different comparative advantages. Collaborating to leverage one another’s strengths to drive common objectives has proven to be a more effective and efficient way to re-shape and improve the industry.

We have adopted a collaborative approach, to work with partners that allow us to harness technologies and competencies that we do yet have. This has helped us improve our internal risk management processes with faster time to market. Collaboration has also facilitated learning and cross-pollination of ideas among different institutions, resulting in better solutions and outcomes.

What is the sweet spot for a bank’s cost-to-income ratio in the region, and how are banks tackling the cost side of the equation in Asia, whether relating to investments, real estate, or other operating costs?

The cost-to-income ratio is a derivative of the different operating models of each private bank. Instead of seeking an ideal ratio, we focus on sharpening our comparative advantage or differentiator to add value to our clients, which is our ability to offer a comprehensive suite of products and services beyond wealth management. Our one-bank proposition provides our clients with solutions and products cutting across the bank, allowing us to cater to the personal and business needs and aspirations of our clients.

Leveraging technology, data, partnerships, and strategic initiatives across other parts of the bank also helps to enhance our operational and cost efficiency, delivering greater value to our clients.

The pandemic popularised work-from-home (WFH) policies and saw a rise in demand for flexible working arrangements. As we transition into a post-pandemic era, what are your bank’s policies in the areas of WFH, flexible work and parental leave? How has WFH impacted the bank’s operating costs, including the need for office space? Are flexible working arrangements and WFH here to stay for the long term?

UOB is the first bank in Singapore to implement a permanent flexible work policy, where we allow all staff to work remotely for up to two days a week. We continue to provide hybrid working arrangements to eligible employees as part of creating a progressive and engaging work environment.

Despite the benefits brought about by flexible work arrangements, different teams – due to the nature of their work – have different preferences. For UOB PB, our teams appreciate the value of working together in-person. Coming back to the office catalyses working chemistry between team members and facilitates impromptu discussions and ideation, which is harder to actualise when working remotely.

To allow even greater work flexibility, UOB has additional measures such as staggered working hours, and a Flexi-2 policy that grants staff two hours off during a working day each month to attend to personal responsibilities.

Over the long term, our focus is on offering our staff flexibility to vary parts of their working hours away from the office, so they have adequate discretion to handle and balance certain exigencies outside of work.