As clients rise up the "ranks" of service and move from retail to "affluent," and possibly onto "high net worth," it creates new opportunities for banks. No wonder that Singapore's DBS thought it should single out fresh data.

DBS has reported a surge in the number of Millennial retail customers who have become users of DBS Treasures, its affluent banking tier. The number tripled in the first half of this year from the same point a year earlier.

The overall number of DBS retail customers making the shift to Treasures rose 180 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2026, showing that it was not just Millennials who drove the change, the banking group said in a recent statement. 

Investment balances of clients who moved into the tier in 2025 have since grown nearly sixfold, which DBS said attributed to deeper investment engagement over time.

People are moving to the affluent proposition because of longer lifespans, evolving careers, growing financial commitments and more dynamic markets changing the way that Singaporeans plan financially, DBS said.

The data comes at a time when this news service has mused on the challenge posed by the “mass-affluent” client segment, an area that raises challenges of “mass-customisation” so that added-value services can be delivered at scale.

DBS, which recently issued its second-quarter financial results, has already stated that it wants to hire more than 600 additional relationship managers, frontline advisors and platform engineers by the end of 2028. It plans to open 18 new wealth centres and upgrade 36 existing ones across the region by the end of 2027. (The push by domestic Asian and international banks in the region to boost headcount was commented on here.)

The bank said it is also using AI tools to lighten manual tasks and cut long onboarding times for clients seeking to use wealth services. Vexatious processes have been cited as a cause for onboarding pains by banks in Singapore and elsewhere in the past.

In seeking to find comparisons from domestic players in Singapore, WealthBriefingAsia noted that OCBC, parent of Bank of Singapore, said in its first-half 2026 results that group wealth management income contributed a higher share (41 per cent) of group total income than a year earlier (36 per cent).