SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) - DBS, which says a third of its customers had negative cash flow January to June 2020, is ramping up its suite of digital financial planning solutions and tools to empower Singaporeans in retirement planning and boost their financial resilience amid these tough times.
The bank studied its pool of customers who have their salaries credited into DBS/POSB accounts and found that for one-third of them, money flowing out of their accounts on average exceeded the amount of money going into the same accounts, in the first six months of this year.
The new solutions that the bank will be launching from this week include a Map Your Money interactive dashboard that can project a customer's future retirement needs based on their current finances. It is part of the bank's digital advisory tool NAV Planner, which in turn is within DBS/POSB's mobile and internet banking service.
On Aug 8, DBS will launch a retirement planning portal to help customers better understand estate planning issues, with access to relevant services such as CPF nomination, will writing and setting up a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA).
The group also announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board and a bank, with DBS and CPF working together to train the bank's wealth planning managers and loan specialists on CPF schemes.
Noting that CPF is an important foundation of retirement for many Singaporeans, the board's group director of communications, Irene Kang, said it welcomed similar collaborations with other financial institutions.
DBS said its new solutions will help customers and their wealth planning managers to identify and address any blind spots or gaps in their retirement planning life cycle, whether a customer is accumulating assets or moving into the decumulation phase. (The decumulation phase is when customers begin to convert their savings, investments and other retirement benefits into sustainable income that can fund their requirements after the pay cheques stop.)
"While most DBS customers know when they want to retire, they are less certain about how long their nest egg will last. They also do not know how to supplement their cash and CPF savings with investments," the bank said.
DBS is also using facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence to help users better visualise their retirement future. "Dubbed Face your Future, the tool, to be launched this month, taps on algorithms to estimate a customer's retirement needs based on his or her lifestyle choices and even creates a photographic portrait of how the customer looks at retirement age," the bank said.
The Map Your Money function pulls together customers' existing assets held within and outside DBS, and projects their future income based on pre-defined assumptions, so that they can better visualise their future cashflow situation through an integrated chart. It also integrates baseline CPF and Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) rules to provide a hassle-free experience for customers when assessing their financial future, DBS added.
Jeremy Soo, the head of consumer banking group at DBS Singapore, said: "During these uncertain times when people are worried about declining incomes and outliving their savings, DBS has an even greater responsibility to extend our expertise in managing money and simplifying retirement planning for Singaporeans.
"Coupled with our partnership with CPF, we are offering Singaporeans an industry-first holistic retirement proposition that provides greater clarity around their financial future based on the assets they have - including those held under government schemes such as CPF and the SRS."
