The bank has implemented the programme in Singapore, and is looking to expands to the wider Asia-Pacific region.

DBS Bank and technology behemoth IBM have joined forces to create an enterprise-wide Centre of Excellence (CoE) in robotic process automation (RPA) for the financial services sector in Singapore and the wider Asia region.

In June, IBM helped DBS set up the CoE. Since then, DBS has already optimised more than 50 business processes across the bank, the bank said in a statement.

Having commenced in Singapore, the RPA programme will now be implemented in other markets including Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia and Taiwan.

The software robots created will help financial organisations perform thousands of time-intensive business processes and manual tasks that require handling high volumes of structured data. These robots also have the capacity to operate 24/7, allowing organisations to remain operational outside of standard working hours and maintain operational efficiencies.

“As the region's leading digital bank, DBS is committed to delivering innovative and unique experiences for our customers and employees, which are critically dependent on the flexibility of our bank's processes,” said Soh Siew Choo, managing director, technology and operations. “Cognitive and robotics process automation is an important capability that will help with the necessary speed and agility to meet the rapidly changing demands of customers and the evolving financial services marketplace.”

Soh added: “We selected IBM as our partner to provide end-to-end services for implementing and maintaining the RPA programme as a COE, given their deep and historically successful experience of enabling process automation and developing transformational capabilities for the banking industry.”

According to research conducted by analyst firm Forrester, it is estimated that by 2019, process automation will change up to 25 per cent of the work associated with all job categories.

DBS is a financial services group in Asia, with over 280 branches across 18 markets. It is headquartered in Singapore.