Singapore's second-largest bank puts AI at the centre of its 'Next Frontier' strategy: an AI-native wealth app with avatars, agentic KYC for private banking, 'OCBC GPT' for staff, and more than S$1 billion a year of technology spending, while saying AI will add relationship managers rather than cut staff.
How is OCBC Bank using AI?
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Singapore's second-largest bank with S$675,688 million in total assets at the end of 2025, has made AI, digital and data one of the four shifts in its 'Next Frontier' strategy announced in February 2026. In July 2026 it launched OCBC WoW, which it describes as the first AI-native bank mobile app in the region, with two avatars that give wealth clients real-time portfolio insights (in beta for 50 invited customers), and said it would spend more than S$1 billion a year on technology over the next three years while hiring 600 relationship managers. Its most evidenced agentic result is in private banking: Bank of Singapore's Source of Wealth Assistant cut report preparation from up to 10 days to about an hour, and the HELIOS platform, announced on 29 July 2026, lets private banking accounts open in 15 business days against an industry median of about six weeks, with human staff keeping final approval. Behind this are OCBC GPT for all 30,000 staff since November 2023, more than 300 AI use cases, and a Group Data Office whose roughly 400 models make about six million decisions a day. OCBC says AI is not driving job cuts, and unlike DBS it publishes no AI value figure.
Lead bank
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited
Total assets (group, as reported, Dec 31, 2025)
S$675,688 million total assets[1]
Charter
Singapore bank holding group; Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited is a Singapore-licensed bank supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), with Bank of Singapore (private banking), Great Eastern Holdings (insurance) and banking subsidiaries in Hong Kong, China and Indonesia
Headquarters
Singapore
Flagship platform
OCBC GPT, HELIOS and OCBC WoW
AI leadership
Tan Teck Long · Praveen Raina · Melvyn Low · Sunny Quek · Jason Moo · Loretta Yuen · Kenneth Zhu · Donald MacDonald · Helen Wong
- Strategy: AI, Digital and Data (ADD) is the 'Tech Shift' in The Next Frontier, the corporate strategy unveiled in February 2026 and described in the 2025 annual report; OCBC says it will allocate capital to investments in AI, Digital and Data.
- Spend: Group CEO Tan Teck Long said in July 2026 that OCBC expects to spend 'north of S$1 billion' a year on technology, including AI, over the next few years; the bank did not publish a separate AI budget or value figure.
- Agentic KYC: Bank of Singapore's Source of Wealth Assistant cut report preparation from up to 10 days to about one hour (2025 annual report); HELIOS, announced 29 July 2026, opens private banking accounts in 15 business days versus an industry median of about six weeks, with relationship managers and compliance staff retaining final judgment.
- OCBC WoW: an AI-native app with avatars Wendy and Wayne, in beta for 50 invited Premier Private Client customers (minimum S$1.5 million in assets under management) from July 2026, with roll-out over the next 12 months and plans for languages beyond English.
- Employee AI: OCBC GPT, built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI, went to 30,000 employees in November 2023 after a six-month trial in which participants completed tasks about 50% faster; AI also cut engineers' coding and testing effort by 20-30% in 2025.
- People: about three in five employees took AI, digital or data training over three years; OCBC and its CEO say AI will increase hiring of relationship managers (600 over three years) rather than cut staff, and early users of a Gen AI coaching programme for 900 wealth advisors showed a 50% revenue uplift against the prior three months.
- Regulators: OCBC took part in MAS's MindForge AI risk-management toolkit (March 2026) and is among the firms with a case study in MAS's SAFR white paper on safeguarding AI agents in finance (July 2026).
- Leadership turned over: Tan Teck Long became Group CEO on 1 January 2026 succeeding Helen Wong; Praveen Raina runs group operations and technology and Melvyn Low became group chief strategy and transformation officer in November 2025.
What is OCBC GPT, HELIOS and OCBC WoW?
OCBC's AI work is run from its Group Data Office, which grew out of the AI unit it set up in 2018, the first at a Singapore bank. Staff use OCBC GPT, a chatbot built with Microsoft's Azure OpenAI and rolled out to 30,000 employees in November 2023, alongside in-house tools for coding, call transcription and an internal knowledge base. The agentic layer is led by Bank of Singapore's Source of Wealth Assistant and its successor HELIOS (Holistic wEalth Lifecycle Insights & Ongoing Surveillance), an agentic AI platform that front-loads customer due diligence. The customer-facing layer is OCBC WoW, launched in July 2026 as what the bank calls the first AI-native bank mobile app in the region, with two avatars, Wendy and Wayne, that Computer Weekly reports use a mix of large language models behind deterministic guardrails so they only draw on OCBC's proprietary research.[3][7][6][9][1]
What has OCBC done on AI, and when?
- Aug 6, 2026
- Jul 29, 2026
HELIOS agentic AI cuts private banking onboarding to 15 business days[7]
Agentic platform completes much customer due diligence before the relationship manager engages a prospect; roll-out across Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai by Q3 2026 and to the Premier Private Client segment by year-end.
- Jul 3, 2026
MAS publishes SAFR white paper with an OCBC case study[15]
Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime proposes governance checkpoints that verify and record an AI agent's proposed actions before execution; OCBC is among the firms whose case studies it contains.
- Jul 1, 2026
OCBC WoW avatar banking and a S$1 billion-a-year technology budget[6][8][9]
Launch of the AI-native app with avatars Wendy and Wayne, beta for 50 invited Premier Private Client customers; Tan said OCBC expects to spend north of S$1 billion a year on technology and will hire 600 relationship managers over three years.
- Apr 15, 2026
Gen AI skills coaching for 900 wealth advisors[5]
A six-month Gen AI programme coaches Singapore wealth advisors; early users had double the weekly customer appointments and a 50% revenue uplift against the prior three months, and it will extend to Malaysia and Hong Kong.
- Mar 20, 2026
MAS AI risk-management toolkit includes OCBC as a participant[14]
OCBC is among 24 consortium members, with DBS, UOB, Standard Chartered and others, behind the MindForge toolkit covering traditional, generative and agentic AI.
- Mar 10, 2026
2025 annual report: Next Frontier strategy and agentic source-of-wealth tool[1]
Reports agentic AI in Bank of Singapore's KYC workflow (up to 10 days to about one hour), 20-30% less engineer coding and testing effort, an AI copilot for corporate relationship managers cutting preparation time by up to 30%, and about three in five employees trained in AI, digital or data over three years.
- Jan 8, 2026
Bloomberg: OCBC's AI lab runs about 400 models making six million decisions a day[11]
The lab sits within a Group Data Office of more than 100 staff; models flag suspicious transactions, score credit risk and filter false positives in anti-money-laundering systems. OCBC and UOB said they were not making AI-related job cuts.
- Nov 13, 2025
MAS publishes AI risk-management guidelines for consultation[16]
Proposed guidelines for all financial institutions expect board and senior-management oversight, AI inventories, risk-materiality assessments and proportionate controls on data, fairness and human oversight.
- Nov 7, 2025
OCBC says technology has not required releasing staff[10]
At an earnings briefing, CEO Helen Wong said that with the use of technology OCBC had not seen a need to release people, while DBS said it would not hire for roles AI will replace.
- Jul 11, 2025
Tan Teck Long named Group CEO[4]
OCBC announced Tan, then head of global wholesale banking, would succeed Helen Wong on 1 January 2026 and made him deputy CEO immediately.
- Oct 24, 2023
OCBC GPT announced for all 30,000 employees[3]
A chatbot built with Microsoft's Azure OpenAI, hosted in a controlled environment, rolled out in November 2023 after a six-month trial of about 1,000 staff who finished tasks about 50% faster; OCBC said more than four million decisions a day were already made by AI.
Where does OCBC use AI today?
| System | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| OCBC GPT and internal Gen AI tools[3][2] | Chatbot for all employees (writing, research, ideation), plus in-house tools for coding (OCBC Wingman), call transcription and an internal policy knowledge assistant (OCBC Buddy) that the bank reported lifted productivity by up to 50%. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Source of Wealth Assistant (agentic)[1][7] | Agent embedded in Bank of Singapore's KYC workflow that extracts and synthesises customer information, identifies gaps and prompts follow-ups, cutting report preparation from up to 10 days to about an hour with human-in-the-loop approval. | In production | AML / KYC |
| HELIOS agentic customer due diligence[7] | Agentic AI platform for customer due diligence and relationship-network mapping; 15-business-day private banking account opening, ongoing monitoring planned, compliance-sourced leads for relationship managers. | Rolling out | AML / KYC |
| OCBC WoW avatar banking[6][9][8] | AI-native mobile app with avatars Wendy and Wayne, voice or text, portfolio tracking, personalised news and ideas from OCBC proprietary research; beta for 50 invited customers. | Pilot | Generative & agentic AI |
| Gen AI coaching for wealth advisors[5] | Six-month programme for 900 Singapore wealth advisors that generates adaptive customer scenarios and gap-analysis reports for supervisors. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| AI copilot for corporate relationship managers[1] | Generates ESG, financial and industry analysis from lengthy unstructured documents during credit assessment, cutting preparation time by up to 30%. | In production | Credit scoring & underwriting |
| Agentic code assistance for engineers[1] | AI embedded across the development lifecycle, from refactoring legacy code to automated reviews and AI-driven testing; coding and testing effort down 20-30%. | In production | AI-generated code & coding agents |
| AI-enabled anti-scam surveillance and transaction monitoring[2][11] | Models flag suspicious transactions; the bank reported a 30% increase in suspicious transactions detected, and the AI lab's models also filter false positives in anti-money-laundering systems. | In production | Fraud detection |
| FEAT-based AI governance and MAS toolkit participation[2][14][15][1] | Regular model reviews for accuracy and bias, tested against fairness, ethics, accountability and transparency (FEAT) principles; OCBC took part in MAS's MindForge toolkit and the SAFR agent-safeguards paper. | In production | AI governance (general) |
Use-case links open the tracker's rules-by-use-case matrix: which documents govern each system type.
What has OCBC disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Total assets | S$675,688 million[1] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Annual technology spend, planned | More than S$1 billion a year over the next three years[7][8] | Jul 29, 2026 |
| Source-of-wealth report preparation | Up to 10 days cut to about one hour[1] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Private banking account opening with HELIOS | 15 business days, against an industry median of about six weeks[7] | Jul 29, 2026 |
| Engineers' coding and testing effort | Reduced by 20-30%[1] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Corporate relationship manager credit-prep time | Reduced by up to 30%[1] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| Employees trained in AI, digital or data | About three in five over the past three years[1] | Dec 31, 2025 |
| AI models and daily decisions | About 400 models making six million decisions a day[11] | Jan 8, 2026 |
| AI use cases | Over 300[2] | Dec 31, 2024 |
| OCBC GPT users and trial result | 30,000 employees; trial participants about 50% faster on tasks[3] | Oct 24, 2023 |
| A.I. Oscar stock-picking tool | 95% increase in trading accounts opened within three months of launch[2] | Dec 31, 2024 |
| Wealth advisors on Gen AI coaching | 900; double the weekly customer appointments and a 50% revenue uplift vs the prior three months in early users[5] | Apr 15, 2026 |
| Relationship managers to be hired | 600 over three years[8] | Jul 1, 2026 |
“We are changing the 'face of banking'. Starting with wealth management, we are transforming how we engage customers with the use of avatars and hyper-personalisation on a real-time basis, 24/7.”[6]
Tan Teck Long · Group Chief Executive Officer · Jul 1, 2026
“The energy we spend on trying to quantify the benefits of AI is probably equal to what we can do here (in executing projects),”[9]
Tan Teck Long · Group Chief Executive Officer · Jul 1, 2026
“With the use of technology, you have not actually seen there's any need for us to say that we have to release people,”[10]
Helen Wong · Group Chief Executive Officer · Nov 7, 2025
“This is a paradigm shift for compliance where we are not just enabling business, but originating opportunities.”[7]
Loretta Yuen · Head of Group Legal and Compliance · Jul 29, 2026
“We are excited to be one of the first banks in the world to deploy generative AI tools at scale.”[3]
Donald MacDonald · Head of Group Data Office · Oct 24, 2023
Who runs AI at OCBC?
Praveen Raina
Head of Group Operations and Technology[1]
Melvyn Low
Group Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer (appointed 10 November 2025)[1]
Sunny Quek
Head of Global Consumer Financial Services[8]
Jason Moo
Chief Executive Officer, Bank of Singapore[7]
Loretta Yuen
Head of Group Legal and Compliance[7]
Kenneth Zhu
Executive Director, Data Science and AI (oversees the AI lab within the Group Data Office)[11]
Donald MacDonald
Head of Group Data Office (as named in October 2023)[3]
Helen Wong
Former Group Chief Executive Officer (retired 31 December 2025)[4]
Which regulators govern OCBC's AI?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| MAS | OCBC's home supervisor. MAS proposed AI risk-management guidelines in November 2025, published the MindForge AI risk-management toolkit in March 2026 with OCBC as a participant, and released the SAFR white paper on agent safeguards in July 2026 with an OCBC case study; HELIOS and the source-of-wealth agent are built around those expectations of human oversight. | |
| HKMA | Hong Kong is one of OCBC's twin wealth hubs, and HELIOS is being rolled out in Bank of Singapore's Hong Kong operations as well as Singapore and Dubai, so agentic KYC there also falls within the Hong Kong banking supervisor's remit. | |
| Basel Committee | Group-wide data for AI models and reliance on outside model and cloud providers engage the Basel Committee's BCBS 239 data principles and its third-party risk principles; OCBC's annual report says it has tightened third-party and supply-chain risk governance to mitigate concentration. | BCBS 239 BCBS Third-Party Risk Principles (Dec 2025) |
What does the public record suggest about OCBC's AI strategy?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice.
01
Spend is disclosed; value is not
DBS publishes an AI economic-value figure (about SGD 1 billion for 2025). OCBC's CEO said the energy spent quantifying AI benefits is better spent on execution and discloses a technology budget (more than S$1 billion a year) instead. For comparison across the two Singapore banks, OCBC's reportable evidence is task-level: 10 days to an hour, 20-30% less coding effort, 15-day onboarding.
02
Wealth is where the agents are
The avatars, HELIOS, the source-of-wealth agent and the advisor-coaching programme all sit in wealth and private banking, the business the bank is trying to double in consumer banking by 2029. That concentration makes wealth results, rather than a group-wide AI metric, the place to look for returns on the S$1 billion budget.
03
Headcount is framed as growth, not savings
OCBC's CEO and its former CEO both say AI will not reduce staff and the bank plans 600 more relationship managers, a contrast with DBS's 4,000-role reduction. It is a posture that depends on AI-driven revenue growth, which is why the avatar app is pitched as a revenue channel rather than a cost saver.
04
A regulator-visible agent programme
OCBC appears in two MAS-led AI publications within five months (the toolkit and SAFR), and Bloomberg reports a Bank of Singapore team walked MAS through the safeguards for its agentic drafting tool before launch. That suggests its governance approach for agents is already being used as an industry reference.
How does OCBC use AI?
OCBC uses AI across employee productivity (OCBC GPT for 30,000 staff, coding assistants, a policy knowledge assistant), private banking (agentic source-of-wealth reports and the HELIOS onboarding platform), wealth engagement (the OCBC WoW avatar app and A.I. Oscar), credit work (a corporate relationship-manager copilot) and fraud detection. Its 2025 annual report calls AI, Digital and Data the Tech Shift of its new corporate strategy.
What is OCBC WoW?
OCBC WoW, short for 'Whole-of-Wealth', is an AI-native mobile app launched in July 2026 with two avatars, Wendy and Wayne, that talk with customers by voice or text, track portfolios and give news and investment ideas drawn from OCBC's proprietary research. It began as a beta for 50 invited Premier Private Client customers with at least S$1.5 million in assets under management and is to be rolled out over the following 12 months.
What is HELIOS at OCBC?
HELIOS (Holistic wEalth Lifecycle Insights & Ongoing Surveillance) is an agentic AI platform for customer due diligence at Bank of Singapore. OCBC says it lets private banking accounts open in 15 business days, about half the industry median of about six weeks, and that relationship managers and review teams remain accountable for judgment and decisions. Roll-out across Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai is due by the third quarter of 2026.
How much does OCBC spend on technology and AI?
In July 2026 OCBC said it expects to spend more than S$1 billion a year on technology, including AI, over the next three years. It has not published a separate AI budget or an AI economic-value figure.
Is OCBC cutting jobs because of AI?
OCBC has said it is not making AI-related job cuts. Then Group CEO Helen Wong said in November 2025 that technology had not created a need to release people, and in July 2026 OCBC said it would hire 600 relationship managers over three years alongside its AI avatar app.
- OCBC Annual Report 2025
- Annual Report 2024 | Creating Value Through AI, Transforming for the Future (undated page, retrieved 2026-10-05)
- OCBC is first Singapore bank to roll out generative AI chatbot to all employees globally
- OCBC appoints Tan Teck Long as Group Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Helen Wong
- OCBC launches Generative AI-Powered skills training for all wealth advisors
- OCBC unveils avatar banking to transform customer journeys
- OCBC harnesses agentic AI to sharpen and quicken onboarding of wealthy customers
- OCBC rolls out AI-native banking, to hire 600 relationship managers in wealth push
- OCBC rolls out AI avatars for wealth management (undated page, retrieved 2026-10-05)
- Singapore's DBS girds for AI as tellers morph into bankers
- Inside Singapore's AI bootcamp to retrain 35,000 bankers
- Earnings call transcript: OCBC posts record Q2 2026 profit as shares near high
- OCBC Q2 profit jumps 22%, shareholders get 47-cent dividend
- MAS launches AI risk toolkit for financial institutions with case studies from DBS, peers
- MAS partners finance industry players to develop safeguards for AI agents
- MAS to trial issuance of tokenised bills, releases guidelines for AI in financial sector
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