DBS Scales Agentic AI to 1,500 Corporate Bankers, Targeting a 30% Cut in Credit-Memo Time
DBS said this week it has rolled out an agentic AI tool to roughly 1,500 employees worldwide — relationship managers and credit risk managers across its institutional banking arm — after an initial pilot with 150 participants. The system runs more than 70 discrete tasks, pulling from annual reports, industry research and internal records to produce a first-draft credit memo, which the bank's stated goal is to cut preparation time by at least 30%; DBS says that work can currently consume up to 40% of a relationship manager's time. Han Kwee Juan, DBS's Group Head of Institutional Banking, said the bank has "captured the knowledge and insight of our best relationship managers and credit risk managers, turning these into a solution which enables us to level up the quality of our credit analysis at scale."
Human sign-off remains in the loop: relationship managers and credit risk managers stay responsible for the final memo and are expected to apply their own judgment of the client, industry and business environment rather than accept the draft as-is. The rollout supports DBS's institutional banking franchise across Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, serving roughly 10 million customers.
Axiata's Boost Launches Boost SME, Bundling Banking, Payments and Financing for Malaysian Businesses
Boost, the fintech arm of Axiata Group, launched Boost SME on August 18 — a digital business-banking platform built jointly with Boost Bank, its digital-banking joint venture with RHB. The platform lets businesses open an account in under five minutes without a branch visit, then access DuitNow QR payment acceptance, same-day settlement including weekends and holidays, and financing through Boost Bank's Biz Loan facility, which offers up to RM300,000 with approvals in as little as ten minutes and disbursement within 24 hours. Two account types are on offer: Boost Grow, paying 3.0% annual interest with no minimum balance or lock-in, and Boost Flow, which pairs a 0.1% sales rebate and 0.5% annual interest with access to merchant cash advances. Group CEO Sheyantha Abeykoon said "businesses need financial services that work seamlessly together rather than in silos."
The launch builds on Boost Bank's first year of operation, in which the digital bank disbursed more than RM150 million in SME financing. Eligible merchants also get complimentary AWS e-invoicing subscriptions and payment-terminal hardware bundled in — a distribution play as much as a banking product.
Vietnam's Central Bank Opens Its Flagship Conference Under the Banner "Smart Banking in the Data and AI Era"
The State Bank of Vietnam opened its 2026 Banking Sector Digital Transformation conference in Hanoi on August 18, gathering roughly 324 delegates and 21 exhibitor booths under the theme "smart banking in the data and AI era," a framing tied explicitly to the Politburo's Resolution 57 on AI and data-economy development. A central bank official told delegates that "digital transformation is not merely a matter of technology, but fundamentally, it is about serving people," while organizers cited cashless payment volumes exceeding 15 billion transactions in the first half of 2026, up 34.28% year-on-year, with some banks now running 95% of transactions through digital channels. FPT IS used the event to debut its "Made by FPT" AI-native ecosystem — a stack spanning FPT Cloud, an AI factory and automation tools including Akabot RPA — pitched as infrastructure for banks moving beyond digitization into AI-native operations, with its Techcombank T-shop merchant app cited as a production reference case with more than 86,000 downloads.
The conference caps a five-year digital-transformation mandate under Decision 810/QD-NHNN and is explicitly framed as Vietnam's pivot point toward its 2030 banking strategy — a policy-setting event rather than a single bank's product announcement.
Eyes on the Day Ahead
Coinfest Asia 2026 runs August 20-21 in Bali, with an Institutional Track dedicated to digital-asset adoption, stablecoin integration and tokenization — worth watching for any Indonesian OJK or regional regulator commentary alongside the usual builder and trader programming. Vietnam's Decree 284/2026, which sets fines of VND 30-50 million for domestic investors trading crypto on unlicensed platforms, takes effect September 1 and is a deadline for firms preparing pilot-exchange applications under Resolution 05 to watch.
Layer 7 Ventures is a research-driven firm focused on AI and cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia. Views expressed are those of the firm and do not constitute investment advice.
