OCBC to Raise Annual Tech and AI Spending to 771 Million Dollars

OCBC (Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.), one of Singapore's three largest banks, plans to increase its annual spending on technology, including artificial intelligence, to more than 1 billion Singapore dollars (771 million US dollars) — stated by the bank's top manager in an interview with Bloomberg.

How much the bank will spend on technology

The exact schedule of budget growth has not been disclosed yet, but the target is more than 1 billion Singapore dollars per year, making OCBC one of the largest corporate technology buyers in Southeast Asia.

• Target annual budget — more than 1 billion Singapore dollars (771 million US dollars)
• Artificial intelligence is included in expenses alongside other technologies
• The statement was made by OCBC's top manager
• OCBC is part of the "big three" of Singapore's banks alongside DBS and UOB

What banks spend their AI budget on

In the banking industry, artificial intelligence is most often deployed at several predictable points. These include transaction monitoring to combat fraud and money laundering, automating customer verification when opening accounts (KYC/AML), credit scoring and borrower risk assessment, as well as digital investment advisors that build a client's portfolio without human intervention. Over the past two to three years, generative AI has been added to this list: chatbots for customer support that reduce call center workload, and internal assistants for employees that accelerate request processing, legal contract review, and report preparation.

Why Singapore pushes banks toward AI

OCBC operates in more than a dozen countries and serves both retail and corporate customers, so the scale of its technology infrastructure is comparable to international financial groups. Growth in IT budgets at regional banks is driven by competition for the status of Asia's fintech hub: Singapore's monetary regulator (MAS) has for years encouraged banks to experiment with generative AI through the Project MindForge industry initiative, launched in 2023 to work through risks and practices of using such models in the financial sector, as well as through regulatory sandboxes for more risky pilots.

What is known about the bank itself

OCBC is Singapore's second-largest bank by assets, operating under OCBC Group, which also includes Bank of Singapore private bank, specializing in wealth management for high-net-worth clients, and one of the region's largest insurers, Great Eastern. This business mix means the bank needs new AI tools in several directions — from retail and private banking to insurance, where AI is increasingly used for risk assessment and payment automation.

What this means

OCBC's decision is another signal that artificial intelligence in banking has stopped being an experiment and has become a permanent line item in capital expenditures, comparable in scale to classical IT infrastructure.