DBS Group Holdings’ CEO Piyush Gupta has earned $17.58 million in FY2024 after delivering another record set of earnings of the bank during the year.
Gupta’s pay comprises a basic salary of $1.5 million, a cash bonus of $6.65 million, a deferred award of $9.36 million and “others” of $80,533. About 17.1% of the deferred award will be paid in cash while the remainder will be paid in the form of shares. “Others” comprises club, car and driver, according to DBS’s annual report for the year.
In FY2023, Gupta took a pay cut of around 27% y-o-y to $11.23 million due to the series of digital disruptions during the year. The CEO, in FY2022, took home $15.38 million after a “breakout year”.
Gupta will step down as the bank’s CEO after its 26th annual general meeting (AGM) on March 28 and after having held the top position within the bank for 15 years since November 2009. He will be succeeded by Tan Su Shan, DBS’s deputy CEO.
Gupta’s retirement and Tan’s appointment were announced in August 2024.
“In less than a month, I will be retiring from DBS after 15 years at the helm,” says Gupta in his CEO reflections. “Looking back, this has without a doubt been the most fulfilling part of my entire career. When I joined the bank in November 2009, the industry was in the throes of the global financial crisis. DBS had an impressive pedigree and many strengths, including a solid deposit franchise in Singapore and a meaningful Asia network, but also untapped potential.
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In his time with the bank, Gupta introduced several new initiatives including its digital transformation.
Reflecting on the success of this, Gupta notes that the transformation was “pervasive” as it spanned the technology architecture in the backend to customer interfaces at the frontend. The bank also pivoted away from product siloes to thinking about customer journeys.
“Third, we changed the bank’s culture such that the workforce increasingly embraced innovation, experimentation and some degree of risktaking. Fourth, we put in place a system to measure progress,” he says.
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On Tan’s succession, Gupta expressed his confidence that she will “take the bank to the next level by building on the strengths that set us apart”. This includes continuing to leverage technology and artificial intelligence (AI) among others.
“I believe we have largely accomplished the goal we had set for ourselves in 2014, of creating a different kind of bank and redefining our category,” he says on technology. “However, in the next three to four years, we have to take another big leap forward.
“While we have shifted a lot of applications to the new tech stack, there are still several more to be moved. There is also the need to simplify and standardise our architecture and processes to the next level,” he adds.
On generative AI, the CEO says it is “clear” that the new technology will have a “profound impact” on the nature of work and jobs and that the bank will have to “fully embrace the possibilities, which should lead to a fundamental rethink of our operating models and even the creation of new business models”.
At the end of his 15 years, Gupta leaves with a sterling report card.
When he first joined the bank, DBS reported net earnings of $2.06 billion in FY2009 ended Dec 31, 2009, unchanged y-o-y. The bank’s return on equity (ROE) fell to 8.44% from 10.1%, while its total capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and common equity tier 1 (CET-1) ratio stood at 16.7% and 13.1%, respectively. The bank’s full-year dividend payout was just 56 cents.
In FY2024, the bank reported record earnings of $11.4 billion, 11% higher y-o-y. This was thanks to higher total income as the bank’s net interest margin (NIM) under its commercial book expanded. During the year, DBS’s ROE reached 18% while total CAR stood at 16.2%. CET-1 ratio as at Dec 31, 2024, was 17%, while the fully-phased CET-1 ratio stood at 15.1%. The bank will pay a total dividend of $2.22 per share in FY2024, 27% higher y-o-y.
During Gupta's time, DBS also hit a milestone market capitalisation of $100 billion, being the first Singapore listco to do so.
Shares in DBS closed 9 cents higher, or 0.2% up, at $45.62 on March 5, 3.78% higher year-to-date and 49.38% higher from a year ago.
