Another franchise shift refers to deepening the twin hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong. The plan is to scale Global Markets in Hong Kong.
Prior to joining OCBC, Tan was chief risk officer at DBS, and a member of the executive committee. He had been at DBS for 28 years and had a ringside seat to some of the changes DBS had experienced, including the setting up of its Corporate Treasury Function, and its digital shift in 2015 and 2016 following the failed attempt of the acquisition of PT Bank Danamon.
In Tan’s Next Frontier, for the tech shift, he has ADD at the core, that is, AI, Digital, Data. The strategy is to embed customer centricity powered by ADD and pursue tech sectors. With a customer-centric strategy, the right customer will be delivered the right product at the right time.
The shifts cut across OCBC’s consumer, wholesale, global markets, wealth management and the group’s other segments building on its One Group approach.
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Recall that DBS’s treasury business is an important cog in the wheel of its horizontal customer journeys. The Treasury & Markets (T&M) segment cuts across DBS horizontally - through consumer, wholesale and wealth. In FY2025 DBS reported $2.14 billion of treasury customer sales, and in 1Q2026, DBS clocked in $592 million of treasury customer sales, more than double the $269 million in 1Q2023.
Banks’ treasury products are used for both the banks’ own treasury departments and their customers' needs. These comprise products for risk management, liquidity, investment yield, foreign exchange, interest rate hedging (ad infiniturm). The products range from offering customers investment solutions for the most simple to the most complex products for all kinds of financial assets but generally fixed income, interest rates, equities, exchange rates, and in some instances, commodities.
During OCBC’s results briefing on May 8, Tan was asked about his plans for a treasury sales strategy at OCBC.
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“The Treasury business is a very important business for us. You have to think about Treasury business in two parts even though it's described as trading income in our accounting terms. One part is trading. The second part is more important to us, which is trying to grow the customer flows with treasury products. This is the part where we are building up talent. If you look carefully at the quarterly results, the customer flow has been rising. To continue to sustain and grow, we have onboarded some talent, mainly in different product categories and sales. Product capability will help to drive the growth of the front-facing business, in particular the wealth business, because wealth is all about structuring products for sale,” he describes.
“In our twin hub strategy in the Next Frontier strategy, we spell out that we want to scale up Treasury in Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is a wealth hub,” Tan adds.
The OCBC CEO declines to give growth numbers but over time, treasury could turn out to be a growth engine to watch as increasingly sophisticated products form part of OCBC’s wealth continuum.
Technically, the Straits Times Index didn’t move much during the week of May 3-8, gaining nine points week-on-week. ADX has fallen to 13, reflective of the STI’s sideways range. Quarterly momentum remains in a declining mode. 21-day RSI is moving sideways. The weight of the indicators suggests that the STI could ease mildly. Support appears at 4,700. Resistance has been established at 5,040.
The uncertainty in the market’s blue-chip segment reflects investors’ and market participants’ reaction to the banks’ results. Over and above what analysts have recommended, investors and market participants are weighing their decisions on whether they should or shouldn’t agree with the analysts.
