The Singapore-based bank wants to boost advisor numbers in the wealth planning space by the end of 2021. The drive is not - at least yet - including the private bank.

DBS plans to double the number of financial planning advisors by the end of this year, recruiting more than 650 wealth managers and insurance consultants. This drive does not – at least for the time being – include the private banking arm, a spokesperson told this news service.

The insurance consultant role by DBS is newly created and supported by financial planning solutions provider Manulife Singapore. 

“The past year has also brought home the importance of being financially prepared: a 2020 DBS NAV Financial Health Series report showed that 64 per cent of individuals who experienced a significant fall in income had less than three months of emergency funds,” Brandon Lam, Singapore head of DBS Financial Solutions Management Group, said. 

COVID-19 and the arrival of the SGFinDex private-public open banking initiative last December has driven demand for financial and retirement planning, the bank said. (There has been some controversy about the SGFinDex system; the Monetary Authority of Singapore has defended it against worries that it was vulnerable to hackers taking confidential client data.)

After SGFinDex’s rollout on 7 December, DBS NAV Planner, the bank’s personalised financial and retirement planning solution, saw a “surge in new visitors”, DBS said, with 200,000 trying its DBS NAV Planner for the first time in December 2020. The protection feature of DBS NAV Planner has hit 2 million users since it was introduced in April 2020. Retail investment also hit a record high in 2020 - investment and trading activities tripled compared with 2019, DBS said.