OCBC Bank pours $771M into AI and avatar banking while hiring 600 wealth managers

OCBC to lift annual tech spending above $771mn as new CEO doubles down on AI

Singapore's second-largest bank is raising its technology budget under Tan Teck Long, sharpening a bet on AI, data and digital banking. CBC plans to raise its annual technology spending to more than $771mn, according to Bloomberg, as Singapore's second-largest lender leans harder into AI and digital banking. The increase marks one of the first strategic signals from Tan Teck Long, who took over as group chief executive on 1 January 2026. Tan succeeded Helen Wong, who retired at the end of 2025 after steering the bank through an earlier phase of digital investment. The reported figure of roughly $771mn sits close to the S$1bn mark in local currency terms, a threshold OCBC has flagged in various technology commitments over recent years. The bank has said it will use 2026 to embed AI, digital and data more deeply across customer journeys, according to its 2025 annual report. The stated aim is to build scale, personalise services and wring out cost efficiencies, the familiar trio of justifications for a rising bank technology bill. Around three in five of OCBC's employees have taken part in AI, digital or data training over the past three years, the bank has said. That workforce push matters because the spending is not only about systems. It reflects a bet that staff across the bank can put AI tools to work rather than leaving them to a central team. OCBC has framed its ambitions around AI, digital and data as a single stack rather than three separate projects. The bank has spent recent years modernising a digital core, an unglamorous but expensive foundation for the customer-facing features it now wants to layer on top. Tan has struck a measured tone on the outlook. For 2026 he expects total income to be stable to growing. Against that backdrop, a higher technology budget reads as a deliberate reallocation rather than a spend fuelled by soaring revenue. OCBC has been building the case for years. It committed about S$500mn to an innovation hub in Singapore's Punggol Digital District, a site due for completion in 2027. The bank has also pushed into newer plumbing, recently backing a $1bn blockchain-powered US commercial paper programme. Those moves fit a regional pattern in which Singapore's big banks compete as much on technology stacks as on branch networks. DBS and UOB, OCBC's local rivals, have made their own loud commitments to AI and digital infrastructure in recent years. In that contest, standing still is not really an option, and a bigger technology bill is the price of staying in the race. The strategy is not without friction. Rising technology costs squeeze the cost-to-income ratio precisely when margins across Asian banking are under pressure. Tan inherits that tension alongside the scrutiny of OCBC's influential long-term shareholders, a dynamic that will shape how freely he can spend. Any sustained rise in the technology bill will have to be squared with the bank's reputation for cost discipline. The broader industry logic is hard to argue with. McKinsey has estimated that generative AI could add $200bn to $340bn a year in value across banking, a prize lenders are racing to capture. OCBC is not alone in leaning on the technology. Rival HSBC found that AI still trails human wealth managers when the money actually moves, a reminder that the returns are uneven. Even so, the direction of travel is set, from banks probing the trust gap with big tech to Singapore's state-level push on blockchain innovation and adoption. For OCBC, the higher budget is the clearest sign yet that its new chief intends to keep pace rather than pull back. The test will be whether more than $771mn a year buys measurable gains in productivity and customer growth, or simply keeps the bank running to stand still.

OCBC rolls out its 'avatar banking' platform with 'Wendy' and 'Wayne,' two virtual financial advisors, as banks integrate AI into wealth management | Fortune

Singapore's OCBC Bank unveiled an AI-enabled 'avatar banking' app, allowing clients round-the-clock access to virtual relationship managers. Yet CEO Tan Teck Long pledged the new AI avatars won't replace the bank's human employees, as he pledged to hire 600 new relationship managers. "Instead of thinking that AI will reduce our workforce, we hope to use it to increase the workforce and support a much larger business," Tan said during a press conference at OCBC's Singapore headquarters on July 1, in one of his first engagements with the press since becoming CEO on Jan. 1. The platform currently features two avatars named "Wendy" and "Wayne," modelled after OCBC's own staff members. Users can pose questions to the avatars, trained on proprietary data from the bank's research team. "They know your portfolio and are personalized to you," Tan explained. "For example, you can ask them what it might mean to add SpaceX to your portfolio, and whether the stock is speculative." The new app, named OCBC WoW, will first be rolled out as a beta version to fifty users, then to OCBC's wealth clients, and eventually to its retail banking segment. "We're not starting with our retail clients, since they tend to have simpler needs," Tan explained. Currently, OCBC's avatars will only speak English. The bank hopes to train the AI to eventually converse in Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Melayu. (OCBC has four core markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Hong Kong). Banks are starting to explore using AI to boost the productivity of their wealth management departments, especially as rising incomes and welath boost the demand for financial advice. A 2025 McKinsey report estimated that the U.S. alone might face a shortfall of up to 110,000 advisors by 2045. AI's ability to ingest and summarize large amounts of data might allow banks to offer high-quality advice to a larger group of customers at lower cost. Yet a recent HSBC-comissioned survey of affluent individuals found that 62% of respondents still credited humans as "the main source" of investment ideas, even as over 70% said they used AI in their financial decisions. Y A OCBC plans to spend more than one billion Singapore dollars ($771 million) annually over the next three years on AI. In addition to creating AI relationship managers, the bank is also creating AI customers as a training tool for its human employees. Tan joined OCBC in 2022 to head its global banking division, then started a six-month stint as deputy CEO in July 2025. He assumed the group CEO role on Jan. 1, 2026, replacing outgoing head Helen Wong. OCBC reported 3.8 billion Singapore dollars ($3.0 billion) in total income in the first three months of 2026, the first set of quarterly earnings in Tan's tenure. Non-interest income grew by 23% year-over-year to 1.6 billion Singapore dollars ($1.2 billion), thanks to surging wealth management fees. OCBC shares are up almost 25% since the beginning of the year. O The bank's "avatar banking" platform is one of the first initiatives under a new coporate strategy to showcase its technological capabilities. Despite his eagerness to embrace AI, Tan demurred on sharing how OCBC will measure the return on its AI investment. "You have to spend a lot of energy to quantify the benefits of AI," he said. "The energy we spend trying to do so may be equal to the amount of time we take to roll out new AI initiatives."

OCBC to Hire Hundreds, Roll Out AI Avatar App in Wealth Push

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., Southeast Asia's second-largest lender, plans to ramp up hiring even as it adopts artificial intelligence, betting that a combination of both will be the winning formula for growing its wealth business. The Singapore lender plans to add 600 relationship managers for its consumer-banking wealth business over the next three years, its top executives said at a media briefing on Wednesday. Alongside that, the bank will launch an app for affluent clients featuring avatars that can provide hyper-personalized wealth-management services in real time. The beta version of the app, called OCBC WoW, will be released to a selected group of employees and customers, available by invitation only. Invited customers are those with at least 1.5 million Singapore dollars in assets under management, equivalent to US$1.2 million, and are served by OCBC Premier Private Client wealth advisers. The subsequent phases of the beta version will be introduced progressively, with a fuller rollout to follow. "We think of AI helping to grow the business. We think of AI complementing our workforce," Chief Executive Tan Teck Long said. Over the next few years, the bank expects to spend north of S$1 billion annually on technology, including AI initiatives, he said. OCBC has said it plans to double its consumer-banking wealth business by 2029. The lender recently acquired HSBC Holdings' wealth management and retail banking business in Indonesia. Banking rivals DBS Group and United Overseas Bank are also increasingly sharpening their focus on wealth management to boost their noninterest income. DBS aims to build 18 wealth hubs across Asia by the end of next year, while UOB targets doubling its wealth income by 2030.