Lengthy onboarding times are more than just a nuisance and source of frustration. They can cost businesses clients who give up and turn away.

Singapore-headquartered Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) is harnessing agentic artificial intelligence to transform its customer due diligence process as part of its wealth management plans under its Next Frontier strategy.

The bank is deploying its agentic AI platform HELIOS (Holistic wEalth Lifecycle Insights & Ongoing Surveillance).

Long onboarding times and the risk of onboarding "abandonment" have been challenges in Singapore as authorities tightened anti-money laundering and know-your-client (KYC) laws in recent years, with a prominent money laundering case spurring calls for action. This news service has explored the way that establishing "source of wealth" has become a pain point in the sector, and how tech such as AI might be able to handle the problem. 

Bank of Singapore has already used AI to try to ease the problem. In October last year, the private bank rolled out an agentic AI-powered tool to automate a major part of the KYC due diligence process – verifying the legitimacy of clients’ wealth and transactions. The bank’s Source of Wealth Assistant (SOWA) enables relationship managers to generate consistent and regulatory-aligned source of wealth reports far faster than before – slashing the turnaround time from around 10 days to just one hour.

HELIOS
OCBC said that the HELIOS' intelligence-gathering and relationship-network mapping capabilities are enhancing accuracy and providing the complete customer information needed for onboarding. By front-loading and automating this collection, verification, and assessment of key data, a significant portion of KYC due diligence is completed before the relationship manager (RM) engages with a prospective customer. This streamlines and speeds up onboarding without compromising regulatory requirements.

High-quality leads will also be identified and surfaced to RMs by the compliance function, which serves as an additional lead generation channel for RMs.

RMs at Bank of Singapore, OCBC’s private banking arm, have begun using HELIOS throughout Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, with the roll-out to be completed by the third quarter of 2026. Account opening can now be completed in 15 business days – half the time needed compared with the current industry median of about six weeks – barring delays in the submission of customer documents.

The roll-out is timely as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) recently announced that it is working with the Private Banking Industry Group to reduce the account opening timeline to within one month by end-2026.

HELIOS will be extended to the OCBC Premier Private Client customer segment in the consumer banking business by the end of the year.

A shift for compliance
Moving the due diligence process before the start of the customer journey transforms current industry practice where KYC screening and risk assessments are typically conducted only after a relationship manager submits a prospective customer’s source of wealth information.

In contrast, HELIOS provides RMs with individuals’ key data and information, and credit risk profile upfront. Information gaps will also be highlighted, enabling RMs to obtain the missing information and data from the customer quickly. This significantly reduces the exchanges between the customer, the RM and the bank’s compliance unit, OCBC said.  

RMs and the internal review teams will maintain ultimate accountability on review, judgment and decision-making. 

Beyond onboarding, HELIOS will be extended to support continuous monitoring of customer activity, which will enable the bank to identify changes in customers' risk profiles, strengthen risk surveillance, and support more timely risk management and compliance reviews.

“We need to identify potential concerns earlier and assess financial crime risks more holistically. By combining agentic AI with the expertise of our compliance professionals, HELIOS enables us to screen prospective customers more thoroughly and earlier in the customer journey, while uncovering connections that may not be obvious,” Loretta Yuen (pictured left), OCBC’s head of Group Legal and Compliance,” said. “This is a paradigm shift for compliance where we are not just enabling business, but originating opportunities.”

“HELIOS is a powerful example of how we can leverage agentic AI to combine risk intelligence with business growth,” Jason Moo, CEO of Bank of Singapore, added. “In the industry, it is very rare for compliance partners to provide good quality leads that bankers can prospect with confidence. This will be a compelling differentiator in not only growing the business, but also attracting bankers to join us.”