DBS chief apologises for recent banking services outage, review being done

DBSD 05 chief Piyush Gupta has apologised for the 2-day tech disruption last week which left many customers unable to access its digital banking services.

"Our customers have the right to expect more from us, and I share their frustration and their pain," Gupta said at the Reuters Next conference on Friday (Dec 3).

He added that the bank is reviewing its processes, and stressed that there was no cyberattack.

The disruption, which started in the morning of Nov 23, was caused by a problem with the bank's access control servers. While the issue was initially resolved by 2 am on Nov 24, it recurred at around 10 am the same day.

On Nov 25, the bank said its services had returned to normal, although some customers were still experiencing problems.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) had labelled the disruption as "serious", and said it expects the bank to conduct a thorough investigation to identify the root causes.

The regulator will consider "appropriate supervisory actions" following the investigation.

Earlier in June, DBS experienced a payments processing glitch that caused some double charges on customers' transactions made using their credit and debit cards. Its online banking services were also down for the day amid heavy traffic.