Value creation in banking ecosystems goes beyond transactional partnerships: DBS’ P’ing Lim

CREATING value for every player is crucial in building a successful ecosystem, said P’ing Lim, head of ecosystem and cross-border transfers for DBS’ regional consumer banking business.

Lim – whose role involves seamlessly integrating banking services into customers’ lives – said an ecosystem goes beyond transactional relationships, and should be able to benefit not just customers, but also the bank and the platforms it works with.

“With partners, it’s important that we see where they’re coming from, so that we can co-create something that’s seamless and also good for all of us,” she said.

Lim noted the challenge was the lack of a “playbook” in the space. Hence, she needed to be able to navigate ambiguity and be resilient.

But she said she found her purpose in being able to avail financial services to everyone, be it a foreign worker, an underbanked customer or the mass affluent.

“I feel very strongly about making all of this accessible. Which is why I’m still having fun,” she said.

Here are some excerpts of Lim’s conversation with The Business Times:

How did you end up in your role?

I’ve been at DBS for 14 years. I started by heading business finance in the institutional banking group, before I was the country chief operating officer for Singapore.

I later moved to the Singapore consumer business, where I headed the balance sheet business, before I ended up here. The stints in the Singapore consumer business were pivotal for me – they really drove home the sense of purpose, and I felt that I could really make a difference to our customers.

Previously, my jobs in the wholesale bank, strategy, or planning were a bit more in the back office, where I was not in the forefront of meeting customers.

What is a key trend that you see in your area?

As opposed to partnerships – such as credit card partnerships – in ecosystems, we have to find the right partner where there’s real value exchange, and we both see value in what both of us are doing.

We embed these services where the customers are. There’s increasing convergence between financial services and technology platforms. We have this phrase that says: We want to be where customers work, live and play.

There is also a growing mass affluent population in India, Indonesia and China. Many of these rising mass affluent customers want to grow and protect their wealth. But they may not have access to banking products or content, because they are not wealthy customers.

These customers are also looking to live a better life. Increasingly, people want to live and work overseas, or send their kids for overseas education.

Meanwhile, everybody’s talking about hyper personalisation as well. How do I offer you banking services and products before you even know about them, or before you even realise you want them?

How does this affect your role?

There are lots of opportunities, but we need to be very strategic about who we want to work with and cultivate a relationship. What we look for are partners who are in the same value chain, because at the end of the day, I want to offer financial services.

In Singapore, we’re quite successful. And we thought, how do I bring this to the region? In the region, people who are worthy of us giving credit may not necessarily be the people who really need credit.

With alternative data, we can underwrite these customers and offer them financing. That’s how we started in countries such as India, Indonesia and China. And we work with partners such as lending platforms, where they have a lot of customers.

We are also starting our journey to tap the mass affluent wealth space in the region. On top of bringing financial and retirement planning, we are anchoring all cross-border propositions in the region as well.