As the longest established bank in Singapore, OCBC Bank was formed in 1932 from the merger of three local banks, the oldest of which was founded in 1912. It is now the second-largest financial services group in South East Asia by assets and one of the world’s most highly-rated bank.
Along with its subsidiaries, OCBC Bank offers an array of retail and commercial banking, specialist financial and wealth management services in its key market areas – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Greater China.
At the Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards 2024, hosted by The Digital Banker in Singapore, OCBC Bank was the recipient of three major awards, while also receiving high acclaim for its social media marketing initiative.
The making of an award-winning retail bank
OCBC Singapore’s consumer banking division covers wealth management, lifestyle financing, branch and premier banking, consumer secured lending, online banking, business transformation and marketing and serves three million customers across its operational regions.
To empower its customers with a full suite of omnichannel solutions for seamless banking across borders, OCBC Bank puts a strong focus on purposeful innovation, deploying new digital ecosystems and accessible green solutions across client journeys, in a bid to future-proof the banking experience for all. These efforts paid off, with OCBC Bank picking up two awards for the Best Retail Bank – both in Singapore and South East Asia.
In Singapore, the business has pioneered several customer-centric banking products including FRANK by OCBC for youth and young adults, full-service Sunday banking and several first-of-its-kind online banking services.
Recently, OCBC brought in innovations to facilitate cross-border payments in and out of Singapore, including expanding Scan & Pay and peer-to-peer transfer solutions in its digital banking app, including DuitNow, Alipay+, PromptPay, QRIS, and UnionPay services. To make it easier for customers to make payments abroad, OCBC was the first bank in Singapore to avail Alipay+ through the OCBC app, allowing customers to pay at millions of merchants in Alipay+’s global ecosystem in 16 different markets.
In addition, the bank also expanded its cross-border payment options with UnionPay to allow customers to make retail payments at UnionPay QR-enabled merchants in 47 markets, providing convenience and competitive exchange rates.
OCBC was also the first-in-market to offer fully digital account onboarding for foreigners relocating to Singapore from China, Hong Kong SAR, Malaysia and Indonesia. These customers can open SGD and multicurrency accounts on the OCBC mobile app remotely and seamlessly. Customer feedback has been very positive, citing the speed of account opening – which does not require a visit to a physical branch and its inherent inconvenience – as a major draw.
Separately, to deepen relationships with customers, OCBC Singapore has continued to bring in new lifestyle elements within OCBC Wisma Atria branch, which is a one-stop shop for all their banking, financial and lifestyle needs from artisanal coffee, homeware, books and even an omakase experience. This has brought in results, with the branch experiencing significantly higher numbers of account openings and credit card applications compared to banking-only branches.
Keeping pace with evolving technology, OCBC is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to help customers achieve their wealth goals. One such example includes the launch of A.I. OSCAR (OCBC Securities’ Customer Artificial-Intelligence Radar) – Singapore’s first AI-powered stock-picker tool. It consumes huge volumes of market data daily, including historical price movements, technical and fundamental indicators of each stock, to pick up market signals that could offer customers personalised stock ideas.
Another example is OCBC Bank’s Sustainability Hub, which has been built to help customers understand the overall ESG ratings of their investments, stay informed with latest sustainability facts and begin their wealth journey with expert curated top ESG picks. Within a short period after launch, the bank experienced a jump in ‘Top ESG Picks’ and ‘Sustainability’-themed investment inflows. The majority of clients who viewed their personal ESG rating undertook investor profiling, with more than half of these customers expressing a need for sustainable investments.
Since September 2022, the bank has been investing in digital upskilling of elderly customers though its annual OCBC Digital Silvers programme. While digital banking has become part and parcel of many of our lives, it is still foreign to some of the most senior customers, who continue to rely on branches for their banking needs.
Through this programme, OCBC’s senior customers not only learn about digital banking, but also how to steer clear of scams. As the programme is held at the branches, this creates a safe space for them to build up their confidence and pick up digital skills which are quickly becoming essential, and to date, more than 3,600 seniors have benefitted from it.
Another initiative of note is OCBC PartnerCare, a comprehensive financial and personal wellness programme designed for more than 35,000 property agents in Singapore. In this recently launched initiative designed to make banking more inclusive, agents get access to a dedicated online OCBC Agent Portal and a range of benefits such as preferential home loan rates, discounts on insurance plans, bonus interest on deposits, rebates on trades made via iOCBC, and access to wellness solutions.
Campaign efforts that pay off
For the launch of the OCBC Money Lock anti-scam in 2023, OCBC Bank ramped up its efforts to educate customers on how they can “lock up” funds in their bank accounts via online banking to protect them against unauthorised digital transfers.
For its promotion, the bank launched its ‘Dear Savings’ campaign to highlight the seamless and frictionless nature of the solution and gain high customer satisfaction and increased favourable opinion. By marketing it as a guardian of savings and using targeted messaging, OCBC convinced over 82,000 customers to protect billions in savings from scams in just six months. This approach led the bank to achieve the highest money lock customer adoption rate out of all banks, as of June 2024.
For running a campaign that ensured people of a frictionless experience and adopting a message that spoke closely to people’s hearts, OCBC received the award for Outstanding Marketing Initiative for a New Product.
Another effort to drive online banking security among its customers was the bank’s 2023campaign titled ‘#BeAProAgainstCons with OCBC’. This campaign’s main goals were to improve brand trust and help protect customers from falling victim to ever-growing scams by raising awareness about how to protect oneself from scams to reduce the value in losses and the volume of scam incidents.
Social media was chosen as the ideal marketing channel due to its wide reach and targeting capabilities that enabled the bank to deliver contextual ads for greater engagement and efficiencies in media spend. By early 2024, OCBC had successfully gained increased trust in the brand and achieved a decrease in scam cases and losses among customers, improving safety and security success indicators by up to 8.6 times. For this, the bank received high acclaim from The Digital Banker, under the category of Best Social Media Marketing Initiative.
In conclusion, OCBC Bank’s impressive array of awards reflects its commitment to excellence, innovation and customer satisfaction, highlighting its dedication to providing top-tier services, building strong relationships and consistently exceeding industry standards.
