DBS Bank to cut 10% jobs over next 3 years

Mumbai, Feb 25: The Singapore-headquartered expects a 10 per cent reduction in its staff strength over the next three years as the banking major is deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in its working operations, its Chief Executive Piyush Gupta said on Monday.

The bank is using AI for internal job mobility, as well as to manage fraud, scams, and risk. It is also using AI models for portfolio management as well as to onboard customers, he said.

Gupta said AI is different and unlike any other technologies adopted in the past, adding that he is struggling to create new jobs for the first time in his over 15-year stint at the helm of the Singaporean bank.

In his address at an event organised here by apex IT industry body Nasscom, Gupta said that in 2016-17, the bank had identified 1,600 jobs that were redundant due to increasing automation. However, the management worked with the staff to create a transition pathway and to find alternative roles for them within the organisation. Around 1200 of them were absorbed in other roles while the others retired or quit. “So, I’ve never had to fire anybody,” he explained.

However, he said the reduction in the workforce over the next three years is because “AI is different”. He pointed out that AI is not a tool that you use but “AI can actually self-create and can manipulate”.

The bank has also added 1,000 people in AI, he pointed out.

Gupta said the volume of business and customers has gone up as the bank now has 20 million clients now, compared to 6 million a few years back. DBS Bank has over 6,500 employees in India.

In a clarification subsequently, the bank said: “The reduction of 4,000 employees over the next three years will primarily involve contract and temporary staff. The workforce reduction will also come from natural attrition, as temporary and contract roles roll off over the coming years.”

The bank has been cautious about relying fully on AI when it comes to customer outreach because of aspects like hallucinations but added that it has done first use case on reaching customer directly and plans to broadbase it by end of the year.

DBS Group, which completed three decades of its operations in India, reported an income of 22.3 billion Singapore dollars in 2024 and a net profit of 11.4 billion Singapore dollars.