MOST banks gush about digital technology, fearing all the while that some born-digital usurper, large or small, will do to them what Amazon has done to retailers, Uber to taxi-drivers and Airbnb to hoteliers. Some have reorganised themselves to become nimbler, copying startups by forming small teams to generate, test, reject and improve ideas at speed. Apps are improving, new products are appearing and online marketplaces are being built. Only a few are turning enthusiasm into money. One of those is DBS.
Singapore’s (and South-East Asia’s) biggest bank is a stockmarket darling. Its share price has roughly doubled in the past two years, outstripping the gains of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and United Overseas Bank (UOB), its main local rivals (see chart). The price exceeds DBS’s net book value per share by 50%. That owes something to the city-state’s buoyant economy—GDP rose by 3.6% last year, the most since 2014—and recovering housing market, and to the doubling of the dividend when DBS reported fourth-quarter results on…
