Investigation on DBS and POSB Banking Services Outage and Strengthening Digital Banking Resilience
Ministry of FinanceSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns MP Alex Yeo’s inquiry into the root cause of the 19 March 2026 DBS and POSB digital banking disruption and MAS’s regulatory response. Minister Gan Kim Yong, for the Prime Minister, explained the one-hour outage was caused by an erroneous system change step, though card services remained operational. He noted that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) expects banks to limit unscheduled downtime for critical systems to four hours per rolling 12-month period. MAS will follow up with DBS Bank to strengthen its change management processes and ensure the continued reliability and resilience of digital services. This policy holds banks to high system standards while requiring them to recover services swiftly and safely when operational disruptions occur.
Transcript
1 Mr Alex Yeo asked the Prime Minister and Minister for Finance in respect of the DBS and POSB digital banking services disruption on 19 March 2026 (a) whether the root cause of the disruption has been identified; (b) whether it is similar to previous incidents and how it is being addressed; and (c) how will MAS take further steps to ensure that banks strengthen the resilience and reliability of their digital banking services.
Mr Gan Kim Yong (for the Prime Minister): The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has set a clear expectation for banks to limit the unscheduled downtime for critical systems to four hours for any rolling period of 12 months. This expectation holds banks to high standards of system resiliency while recognising that operational disruptions can sometimes happen due to the complexity of systems. When there is a system outage, banks are expected to recover services swiftly and safely.
DBS Bank encountered a system issue and suffered a service disruption lasting about one hour from 12.03 pm to 1.19 pm on 19 March 2026. The disruption prevented customers from viewing their deposit balances and some customers from making payments through digital channels. Automated teller machines, credit cards and NETS debit cards continued to be accessible. DBS Bank was also able to recover its systems after one hour and restore all services to customers.
Investigations reveal that the disruption was caused by an erroneous step when performing a system change. MAS will follow-up with DBS Bank to strengthen their change management process.