Why AI is now embedded ‘in almost everything we do’: OCBC’s Praveen Raina

[SINGAPORE] Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a catalyst for OCBC’s technology overhaul, sharply reducing the time needed to rewrite legacy systems, said Praveen Raina, the bank’s head of group operations and technology.

Tasks that once required years of manual code review are now completed in a fraction of the time. In one Hong Kong project involving the retirement of Cobol, AI cut the expected migration timeline by up to three years.

“At least 40 to 50 per cent of the work is already done,” Raina said, freeing engineers to focus on higher-value testing and problem-solving.

Cobol is an ageing programming language widely used in older banking systems. Few engineers today can still read or rewrite it. AI speeds up the process by automatically interpreting the old Cobol code and converting it into modern languages.

But even as AI boosts productivity, OCBC is preparing for a deeper technological shift.

Quantum computing, Raina said, “will totally and radically change everything” – from infrastructure to application stacks – even if its commercial moment has yet to arrive.

For now, the bank is investing in talent, expanding research partnerships with universities, and leaning on what Raina describes as a supportive, forward-looking regulatory environment in Singapore.

Here are some excerpts from his conversation with The Business Times:

How did you end up in your role?

It seems like yesterday. I did computer science for my undergraduate degree in Canada. I was telling my kids that I was fortunate because at that time, computer science was not so competitive.

How I got into OCBC was quite coincidental. A friend of mine was in OCBC, and he said the bank was looking for someone to join them.

I was in Canada, where the temperature was minus 30 deg C. I looked up Singapore’s weather, which was 30-plus deg C. I turned to my wife and said: “We should go for it.”

When I joined OCBC, I remember my manager asking me: “How long can you stay at OCBC?” I said maybe two or three years, since I wasn’t sure if I would return to Canada. His response was: “That’s the shortest period anybody had ever said!”

I told him: “That’s the longest I can envision committing to a job!”

Now, 18 years down the road, I’m still here at OCBC. I was lucky – I had good mentors and good superiors who always guided me, and a great team.

I enjoy building things, and I had the opportunity to build things from scratch here. My team and I... adopted the mentality of trying, testing and fixing. In fact, most of my leadership team today were people I hired 10 to 15 years ago, when they were juniors.

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

The key trends now are AI and quantum computing. We are watching these trends closely and actively building capabilities.

We start with experimentation – testing, learning and even failing. Some of our most valuable lessons came from proofs-of-concept that did not work, which helped our teams grow and refine our approach.

Today, AI is embedded in almost everything we do. A key area of impact is the engineering development lifecycle, where AI reviews, tests and accelerates processes, and improves developer productivity. In operations, AI handles complex processing, cutting turnaround time significantly and improving our speed-to-market.

Technology is always evolving. The pace of change today is unlike anything we have seen before. Many of you are too young to remember when the automated teller machine was introduced.

But when it first came out, it was a big saga. People worried that all the bankers and tellers in the branches would lose their jobs. But today, can you imagine life without these machines?

Another example is the Internet. I remember when I was an intern in Canada, and we had to write a business paper to get the company to pay for an Internet connection. Now, everybody uses it.

That’s the reality – technology will keep changing.

How do these affect your role?

Technology waves will always come and go. That is why upskilling our people is important – they are how we maintain our edge.

We do so by investing heavily in training the current and future workforce.

For example, in Singapore, we take in more than 100 polytechnic students each year as interns under the OCBC Ignite programme.

While classroom learning is important, real-world experience gives them practical skills and builds confidence. By providing hands-on learning, these students are better prepared for the future workforce and creates a win-win if they choose to build a career with us.

Besides our people, we also differentiate through our technology. It is no longer a back-office function. At the end of the day, products in the market are similar, but what sets us apart is how we enhance the banking experience – one that is seamless, reliable, fast and evolves with our customers’ needs.

We are therefore undergoing a technology transformation. For the last few years, the organisation has been doing a major overhaul and uplifting our technology stack.

We’re not doing it for the sake of doing it. We are doing it to address what customers want.

How do we provide a seamless experience so they can do more business with us? Today, if I don’t provide that experience, they can go to any other organisation – the customer is mobile.