50 Years of Asia: Piyush Gupta

Euromoney, May 9 2019

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DBS and, in particular, its chief executive, Piyush Gupta, are considered visionary in the digital disruption space.

But it seems he overstated the case when he said, a few years ago, that in the next five to 10 years we would start to see banks failing because they had not embraced digital.

“I think that was wrong,” he says now. “Three years down the road, I’m not seeing any banks getting to the stage of failing in the short term. There’s a lot more resilience than I anticipated.”

Now, he thinks if banks are going to fail, it will be a matter of capital, not liquidity, as beating the cost of capital becomes more difficult.

Gupta says there is still plenty more disruption to do, particularly around big data, AI, partnership and blockchain. But, asked if the threat he anticipated from the likes of Ant Financial has materialized, he admits: “I expected more.” He thinks there are two reasons. One is that as big players go outside their home markets, they face more headwinds.

“For many people in China, you could make a big difference, because the underlying payment methods are inefficient. But when you come to Singapore, people already just flash their card anyway. Outside home markets, it has not been that easy.”

The second reason is that in the last two years regulations have become more level, he says. “In the early years, for a decade, all of big tech and fintech had massive regulatory arbitrage.” That is narrowing. “But don’t get me wrong, they are still our biggest nightmare.”

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