MAS Punishes DBS Bank After 2021 Digital Banking Outage

The Monetary Authority of Singapore(MAS) has laid the hammer down on DBS Bank after its digital banking services were widely unavailable for three days toward the end of last November.

In a public statement, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said it has imposed an additional capital requirement on DBS Bank of approximately $692 million, based on a multiplier of 1.5 times its risk-weighted assets for operational risk. They noted this is four times higher than the penalty it levied for a similar disruption back in 2010, when the Monetary Authority of Singapore applied a 1.2 multiplier to DBS’ operational risk-weighted assets that would be roughly equal to $171 million in today’s currency

In a statement the Monetary Authority of Singapore said it noted deficiencies in DBS Bank’s incident management and recovery procedures to restore its digital banking services to a normal state, resulting in the prolonged duration of the disruption.

The agency said it has directed DBS Bank to appoint an independent expert to conduct a comprehensive review of the incident, including the bank’s recovery actions. That review is also required to assess how a similar incident can be prevented in the future. DBS Bank must c0rrect all issues uncovered by the review and implement measures to ensure any future disruption to its digital banking services is resolved quickly and adequately. The additional capital requirement will be reviewed when the Monetary Authority of Singapore said is satisfied DBS Bank has addressed those shortcomings.

“MAS requires financial institutions to have robust controls and processes to ensure the reliability and resilience of their IT systems and the continuous delivery of essential financial services to their customers,” said the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s assistant managing director of banking and insurance Marcus Lim. “MAS will take appropriate supervisory action against any financial institution that falls short of our regulatory expectations.”

 

 

 



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