At DBS’ annual general meeting on Mar 31, chief executive Piyush Gupta apologised for the service disruption days earlier, while chairman Peter Seah announced that a special board committee had been set up to investigate, with external experts brought in to help.

MAS on Friday noted that it had then directed DBS to conduct a comprehensive review, including an assessment of the adequacy of management oversight, staff competencies, operational processes, system resiliency and architecture design for its digital banking services.

“Although the causes of the March and May incidents appear distinct from each other, MAS has now required the review to cover the May incident as well,” it said.

The regulator added that it has also required DBS to take immediate steps to improve the resiliency and recoverability of its existing system via enhanced monitoring, more comprehensive testing and additional system redundancies. 

In response to MAS, the bank’s CEO Gupta said on Friday: “We apologise for the digital disruptions that have recently occurred. Our customers rightly expect more of us and we are committed to doing better.”

He added that the review by the special board committee would be completed “as a matter of utmost priority” and that DBS would “implement all recommendations expeditiously”.

DBS added that MAS’ latest action would have an incremental 0.3 per cent point impact on the bank’s Mar 31 Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio, reducing it from 14.4 per cent to 14.1 per cent.

The ratio compares a bank’s capital against its assets. 

Earlier this week, DBS reported a stronger-than-expected 43 per cent jump in first-quarter profit to a new high from a year earlier on a higher net interest margin, sustained business momentum and resilient asset quality.