Bank of Singapore Says In-House AI Agents Cut Client Onboarding to 15 Business Days

That is half the industry median of about six weeks, Moo said during a fireside chat at Madinat Jumeirah. "We developed our own AI agents to do KYC for clients," he said. The agents collect client data, generate reports and speed up due diligence, according to Moo.

Onboarding is one of the slowest and most labour-intensive parts of private banking, where compliance teams must verify the source of wealth for clients who often hold assets across several countries. A bank that can halve that process gains an edge in winning mobile, wealthy clients, which is the business Dubai and Singapore are both competing to attract.

Moo, who runs the private banking arm of Singapore's OCBC Group, argued that the two cities are not fighting over the same pool of money. "There is no cannibalisation. There's enough wealth around the world to really be managed in different locations," he said. He cited Dubai's position between Asia and Europe, the technology and investment ecosystem around the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), and growth prospects across the GCC and the Indian subcontinent as reasons for its appeal.

Dubai is one of the bank's three strategic hubs, alongside Singapore and Hong Kong. Its DIFC branch serves clients in the Middle East and Europe and is still adding bankers, Moo said.

Capital Moving Both Ways

Moo said the bank has seen rising interest from Chinese conglomerates and investors in Dubai. It has organised visits to the emirate for Chinese investors and senior financial executives, and its DIFC branch now has dedicated coverage for Chinese clients.

The flow also runs the other way. Middle Eastern clients are looking to Asia for custody and investment, with particular interest in Southeast Asian markets, Moo said. "I really feel like that's where the next alliances will be built," he said of the Asia-Middle East corridor. The bank can draw on OCBC's network across Greater China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to serve them.

Asian clients remain the bank's largest customer segment, but participation from international clients has grown over the past five years, according to Moo.

Family Offices Want AI Exposure

Moo said family offices are taking a more institutional approach to allocation and diversification, which puts more pressure on private banks to offer a full range of products. "We have to offer them everything from public to private opportunities," he said. He pointed to client interest in private market deals tied to AI and its supporting infrastructure, including data centres, cooling and energy.

He also warned that agentic AI brings new risks as clients build their own agents and dashboards to manage their financial information. "I think AI is going to be an incredible game changer, but at the same time a big threat if we don't think about the most important aspect of it, and that's cybersecurity," Moo said.

The session followed opening remarks by DIFC Governor Essa Kazim. Moo did not say whether the bank plans to extend its KYC agents to other parts of the client process or offer them through the wider OCBC group.