Q1: How did the business perform in 2025, and what drove its growth over the past year? How has the cost-income ratio trended this year, and what were the key factors influencing it? Looking ahead, what are your main priorities and strategic plans for 2026?

Bank of Singapore has seen good business momentum in 2025. As at end-September 2025, AUM had grown close to 20% year on year, and we had already surpassed our target of US$145 billion in AUM by 2025. Our Hong Kong branch has already exceeded its target of growing its AUM by 50% from 2024 to 2026, more than a year ahead of time. Revenue increased over 20% year-on-year, driven by robust transactional activity. Across our network, our Greater China business led growth, followed by ASEAN and the Middle East. 

We also continued to strengthen our position in two key client segments, with over 20% AUM growth from ultra high net worth clients and over 30% AUM growth from financial intermediary clients. These results underscore our strategy to sharpen our focus on these two segments by tailoring our services and solutions to their complex needs.

Looking ahead, we aspire to be the top Asian private bank, and among the top five private banks in Asia, in the next three to five years. Achieving this means being the clients’ main bank, not just for product execution, but supporting them holistically across succession planning, investment advisory, and providing access to global products and solutions. We are also exploring ways to leverage our parent company, OCBC’s extensive regional presence, to build an integrated onshore-offshore private banking network across the region. With these goals in mind, we intend to double down on growing our talent pool and strengthening our digital capabilities.

Q2: Looking at the investment outlook for 2026, which markets and asset classes are you prioritising for client portfolios to capture opportunities while managing risks? How are clients currently allocating their portfolios, and what trends are you seeing in DPM adoption and investment behaviour?

We expect global markets to remain broadly supported in the year ahead, with the US Federal Reserve continuing its interest rate cuts against a backdrop of steady economic growth. That said, markets are still highly sensitive to how quickly policy easing will unfold in 2026, especially given the uncertainties around inflation, trade tariffs, and employment trends. This could lead to periods of volatility, but for investors with well-diversified portfolios, these should not pose major challenges.

While we may see occasional market corrections and even a reality check in the AI sector after its sharp rise in valuations, we believe AI remains a strong, long-term investment theme. For clients, the best approach is to stay anchored to our strategic asset allocation framework, which is designed to deliver sustainable, risk-adjusted returns over time.

As we look to 2026, we are moderating our risk-on stance given the sharp rally in global equities. Within equities, we maintain an overweight position in Asia ex-Japan, which we see as offering attractive opportunities. In fixed income, we remain neutral on duration, expecting long-term US Treasury yields to stay elevated due to persistent inflation risks and fiscal concerns. 

For developed markets, we hold neutral positions in investment-grade bonds and underweight in high-yield bonds. In emerging markets, we are neutral on corporate bonds and underweight on sovereign debt. Gold continues to play an important role as a hedge against inflation, fiscal sustainability issues, and geopolitical risks.

We are also seeing growing interest in currency diversification. Many clients have started shifting away from the US dollar and increasing allocations to our SGD mandates. Our discretionary portfolio management business has seen steady AUM growth this year, reflecting client confidence in our CIO views and disciplined management process. Importantly, 80% of our DPM clients stay invested for more than six years, underscoring their long-term approach and trust in our ability to navigate market cycles.

Q3: With artificial intelligence increasingly shaping the wealth industry, how has the firm leveraged technology and AI to transform processes and enhance value for both clients and the back office? What key technology upgrades were introduced in 2025, and what are your digital priorities for 2026 and beyond?

Technology continues to be a critical enabler in achieving our business objectives and is central to empowering our relationship managers to serve clients with greater efficiency and impact. AI is a key focus area in this transformation.

In June 2025, we introduced a source of wealth AI tool developed in collaboration with OCBC’s group data office. Leveraging agentic AI, the tool revolutionises how relationship managers prepare source of wealth reports by analysing documents such as financial statements, business and employment records, and payslips to generate a comprehensive report on a client’s wealth origins. This innovation has reduced preparation time significantly from 10 days to just 1 hour, accelerating client onboarding and periodic reviews. It also enhances report consistency, minimises follow-ups, and ensures alignment with compliance standards, strengthening risk management. With this uplift in productivity, relationship managers can focus on deepening client relationships and delivering superior experiences, while acquiring new skills in critical inquiry and AI output validation.

We also launched a generative AI tool this year that provides relationship managers with real-time access to the latest investment insights curated from our chief investment office’s research. This equips them with relevant talking points to engage clients more meaningfully and deliver an exceptional advisory experience.

Ultimately, while technology is transforming the way we work, the essence of private banking remains relationship-driven. Our commitment is to harness technology to complement the human touch, enabling dynamic and efficient engagement internally and with our partners and clients.

Q4: The private banking industry saw a plethora of leadership and structural changes in 2025. Looking into 2026, what are your key priorities for attracting and retaining talent across the front, middle, and back office? Are there plans for new hires in key markets?

Bank of Singapore’s talent strategy is anchored on attracting and developing exceptional people who can elevate our franchise, and we are always on the lookout for strategic hires across functions. Our reputation as an attractive employer within the industry has helped us achieve this. We hired quite aggressively last year and hit our ambitious target of hiring 500 relationship managers a full year ahead of schedule. A sizeable proportion of these new relationship managers were senior, experienced relationship managers with over ten to twenty years of experience. This affirms our appeal to seasoned private bankers and their desire to be part of our growth journey. 

Besides relationship managers, we also deepened our product and advisory bench strength with specialist new hires across our network. We eased up on the hiring pace this year but are preparing to recruit intensively again next year, to shore up our capabilities and capitalise on the growth opportunities we see ahead. 

Beyond recruitment, we also place strong emphasis on employee development to future-proof careers. This includes equipping our teams with skills in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence and digital tools, ensuring they remain agile and ready to deliver differentiated value in a rapidly evolving wealth management landscape.