Singapore’s push to shorten account opening time for the rich is drawing an artificial intelligence response from its banks, which have been riding a boom in wealth management.
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. is deploying a platform of AI agents that will cut approval times to 15 business days, well inside the roughly one-month target the financial regulator has. The lender plans to roll out the platform to all the relationship managers at its private banking arm by the end of September.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore said in May it wants to cut account opening to within a month from a median of about six weeks or longer. The move was to ensure banks avoid unnecessary and excessive checks on clients’ sources of wealth while upholding high standards.
"We’re more focused on speed and completeness rather than the number (of clients) at this point,” Jason Moo, chief executive officer of OCBC’s Bank of Singapore, said at a briefing.
OCBC, along with its Singapore rivals, has been reaping fees from its wealth management business, with the country seen as a haven amid geopolitical uncertainty. At the country’s biggest bank DBS Group Holdings Ltd., overall onboarding turnaround time fell by 50% in the first five months of this year, according to a spokesperson, who added the lender can open accounts within a week depending on the new client’s profile. – Bloomberg
