OCBC to raise annual spending on technology and AI to $771 million

OCBC (Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.), one of Singapore's three largest banks, plans to raise its annual spending on technology, including artificial intelligence, to more than S$1 billion (US$771 million), a senior bank executive told Bloomberg in an interview.

Сколько потратит банк на технологии

The bank has not yet disclosed an exact timeline for the budget increase, but the target is more than S$1 billion a year. That would make OCBC one of the largest corporate technology buyers in Southeast Asia.

• Target annual budget: more than S$1 billion (US$771 million)
• The spending covers artificial intelligence alongside other technologies
• The announcement came from a senior OCBC executive
• OCBC belongs to Singapore's "big three" banks, along with DBS and UOB

Where banks spend their AI budgets

In banking, AI tends to land in a few predictable places: transaction monitoring to fight fraud and money laundering, automated customer checks during account opening (KYC/AML), credit scoring and borrower risk assessment, and robo-advisors that build investment portfolios for clients without human involvement. Over the past two to three years, generative AI has joined that list. Banks now use chatbots for customer support to take pressure off call centers, and internal assistants that help staff process applications, review contracts for legal issues, and prepare reports faster.

Why Singapore is pushing banks toward AI

OCBC operates in more than a dozen countries and serves both retail and corporate clients, so its technology infrastructure operates at a scale comparable to that of international financial groups. Competition to become Asia's fintech hub is also driving up IT budgets at the region's banks. For years, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has encouraged banks to experiment with generative AI through Project MindForge, an industry initiative launched in 2023 to work through the risks and best practices of using such models in the financial sector, as well as through regulatory sandboxes for riskier pilots.

What we know about the bank

OCBC is Singapore's second-largest bank by assets. It operates under OCBC Group, which also includes Bank of Singapore, a private bank focused on wealth management for high-net-worth clients, and Great Eastern, one of the region's largest insurers. With that mix of businesses, the bank needs new AI tools across several lines at once, from retail banking and private banking to insurance, where AI is increasingly used to assess risk and automate claims payouts.

What it means

OCBC's move is another sign that AI in banking is no longer an experiment. It has become a permanent capital expenditure line, comparable in scale to traditional IT infrastructure.