People Moves
DBS Appoints New Permanent Chief Information Officer
In the past six months, the bank had been told by Singapore's regulator to hit the pause button on non-core activity while it sorted out a series of technology problems. The acting CIO during this period has stepped down to continue as full-time country head for Singapore. A new CIO has been named.
DBS, which has been sorting out a series of recent technology outages, has appointed a new chief information officer, Eugene Huang. He is succeeding Han Kwee Juan, who has been double-hatting as DBS acting CIO and Singapore country head since November 2023.
Following this, Han Kwee Juan will return as full-time Singapore country head from 1 June.
With more than 36 years’ experience under his belt in technology and banking, Huang is joining from Ping An Group. At that Asian firm, he led a team of 22,000 employees providing IT offerings including infrastructure, cybersecurity, middleware and customer-facing applications. He was concurrently chairman and CEO of Ping An Technology, the technology arm of Ping An Group.
A US citizen, Huang has worked in financial centres, startups and multinational corporations. In the early part of his career, he spent nearly 10 years in New York with Salomon Smith Barney and Credit Suisse First Boston. He was subsequently with Citigroup and HSBC. Prior to his latest role at Ping An Group, Huang was deputy general manager, chief technology officer and chief operating officer at OneConnect Financial Technology.
“Eugene possesses a rare blend of deep business experience and technology expertise – as well as international exposure – which will serve DBS well as we continue to enhance our system resiliency while innovating for the future. His immediate focus will be to build on the work the bank has done since last year to strengthen our technology resiliency,” Piyush Gupta, DBS CEO, said.
On 2 May, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said that it would not extend the pause imposed on DBS Bank’s non-essential business while it restored its digital banking services after a series of mishaps. DBS has apologised for a set of digital disruptions during 2023.
