In 2023, Singapore attracted S$12.7 billion ($9.43 billion) in fixed asset investments, amid a challenging global environment, according to data from the country’s economic development board. The previous year it was even higher, at S$22.5 billion.

Competition in the high net-worth category is fierce: every private bank targets HNW customers, with the aim of making as many as possible of them long-term customers.

It has become fashionable to describe private credit as an opaque and fast inflating bubble that could bring crisis to the global financial system. But in Asia even banks and regulators hope it will grow to bridge the yawning financing gap.

Singapore’s DBS Bank has spent the past decade transforming itself into one of the world’s best digital banks. But a series of lengthy service outages over the past year has wrongfooted senior management, who have been left to issue apologies and pledge to do better.

With a presence in 19 markets globally, including Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India and the US as well as Europe, DBS delivered a record total income of S$16.5 billion ($12 billion) in 2022, a 20% increase in net profits to S$8.19 billion, return on equity of 15% and S$20.5 billion in sustainable financing loans.

Singapore is Asia’s leading private banking hub – and at the heart of that story is DBS, a bank that has remade itself over the past decade and a half into one of the world’s best wealth managers.

The Singapore bank has strengthened its proposition to serve under-represented communities and aligned its own lending operations to make an impact.

Analysts tracking the trajectory of Asian wealth and trends around gross domestic product are free to peruse government data, surveys and all available reports. Yet some of the most telling clues as to what is going on in this fast-growing region can be found inside the balance sheet of DBS Private Bank.

DBS, JPMorgan and Japan’s SBI combined to launch a groundbreaking decentralized finance trade stewarded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It was a great deal of work, but to what end?

The Singaporean bank has launched sector-specific decarbonization commitments it says are industry-leading. For them to be achieved, the bank’s corporate client base is going to need to make changes, too.

More awareness by corporates of the role played by small suppliers has boosted early payment programmes.

Always a strong player in small and medium-sized enterprise banking, DBS enjoyed a stellar year driven by digital investments, careful credit management and great progress in India.

Best Bank: DBS Bank

The wealth management award is in some measure a decision about a model as much as a bank. For the last few years, we have tended to reward the big Swiss houses, UBS and Credit Suisse, who have scale, history and the advantages of being part of a larger bank. In other years, we might consider the Swiss pure-play model, the ultra-high net-worth-only model, the mass-affluent approach.

The bank is successfully exporting its SME expertise and advanced financial technology across Asia.

DBS has taken the boldest step yet in digital DCM, encouraging corporate and financial borrowers to self-issue commercial paper direct to investors. Volumes are strong. The next step, longer-dated bonds, will come soon.

The blockchain-based cross-border payments platform will operate across 15 countries.

DBS’s purchase of Citi’s local consumer business in January was a timely reminder of Taiwan’s allure. Yes, the island lies on a geopolitical fault line and the banking sector is crowded. But it’s also profitable and now welcomes digital disruption.

The censure from the Monetary Authority of Singapore will sting far more than any capital impact for a bank that prides itself on being a peerless digital innovator.

Of all the 13 consumer businesses on the block in Citi’s Asia revamp, Taiwan was the most prized. DBS’s successful bid bolsters an already profitable business – and doing so required some hard thinking about geopolitics by the Singapore bank’s board.

Will the bank’s payouts after a phishing scam set a precedent?

Covid barely dented the strength of the banking system and most banks have been steadily releasing the provisions they took. Euromoney talks to the leaders of our 25 reviewed banks and others about the challenges they face as the world normalizes.

Piyush Gupta thinks the worst is behind us and now is the time for the bank to start looking at China.

The digital pioneer’s consumer website and mobile app have been hit by a series of problems.

A flurry of new services, including DBS Digital Exchange and Climate Impact X, have kept the Singaporean lender in pole position.

It’s a sign of a well-run bank when it not only survives a pandemic largely unscathed but uses it as an opportunity to gain ground. Characteristically, DBS’s Piyush Gupta not only kept the bank on course but used the crisis to make two potentially transformative acquisitions, launch two new exchanges and think afresh about what banking should look like.

Singapore’s DBS has unleashed an unlikely new weapon against impersonation scams: a strange blue-haired man called Kim Huat.

High net-worth individuals once eschewed cryptocurrencies. When Covid hit, many learned to embrace them. They see the danger of endless QE and the returns to be generated in the world of decentralized finance.

Court documents relating to fraud charges against a young and flamboyant Singapore trader show that most of the country’s banks have had a relationship with him.

DBS’s digital capability was tested to the core by Covid, and it not only stepped up but turned the situation to its advantage. From consumer to institutional, DBS used the opportunity to convert clients to digital channels, benefiting from improved economics as it did so. Before long the government was counting on the bank to disburse emergency payments to those under stress.