DBS appoints Soh Kian Tiong as chief risk officer
DBS Group D05 on Monday (Oct 25) named career banker Soh Kian Tiong as its new chief risk officer (CRO) with effect from Nov 4, 2021.
Reporting to the bank's chief executive officer (CEO) Piyush Gupta, Soh will be taking over from current CRO Tan Teck Long, who will be leaving DBS to return to a customer-facing role, according to the bank.
"Under Teck Long's leadership, DBS has further enhanced our credit underwriting capabilities, multi-year credit architecture programme, and strengthened our attention on ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) risks, financial crime risk, and cybersecurity and data protection. While he will be sorely missed, we respect his desire to return to a customer-facing role," commented Gupta.
Rival bank OCBC in September announced it hired Tan as its head of global wholesale banking. He is due to take on the position at OCBC with effect from Mar 15, 2022, after relinquishing his CRO title at DBS on Mar 12, 2022.
In his new role at DBS, Soh will be a member of the bank's group management committee as well as its group executive committee. This comes in addition to being accountable to the group's board risk management committee.
Soh has accumulated over 25 years of experience in business and risk roles with DBS since he joined the bank in 1995. Posts which he has held over the span of his career with the bank include head of credit risk and head of DBS's Financial Institutions Group.
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He was last based in Hong Kong as DBS Hong Kong's senior risk executive since June 2019; concurrently, he was chief credit officer for Greater China, overseeing the bank's credit and risk functions in Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as credit risk for Taiwan.
He is presently a member of DBS Bank (Hong Kong)'s management committee, and chairs the Hong Kong risk executive committee.
Said Gupta of the incoming CRO: "Kian Tiong's appointment is testament to our ability to groom leaders from within. Over the span of his longstanding DBS career, he has been rotated across markets, and embraced a mix of business and risk roles. I am confident that he will bring this experience to bear meaningfully in his new role."
Shares of DBS were trading S$0.12 or 0.4 per cent higher at S$31.49 as at 9.18am on Oct 25, after Soh's appointment was announced.
READ MORE: DBS appoints Tan Teck Long as chief risk officer, with Elbert Pattijn to retire
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