DBS Best Bank in Singapore? Don’t Bull Shit

The DBS outage is now into its third day and there is still no sign of when the issue will be resolved. Until now, users are still unable to log into mobile or ibanking. What are the IT engineers doing?

Timeline of Outage

On Tuesday morning (23 Nov), users reported that they were unable to log into digital banking services. Early Wednesday morning (24 Nov), the bank announced that services were fully restored. Shortly later however, it announced that the issue has recurred.

Later in the afternoon, the DBS Singapore Country head Shee Tse Koon apologised on video for the service disruption. He identified the problem as a problem with their access control servers but did not say who was responsible for the problem.

As of Thursday (25 Nov), DBS and POSB users are still unable to log into digital services. It has caused immense frustration among its users who make up a large pool of Singaporeans.

Serious Disruption to Livelihood

The worst hit are companies which are unable to pay their employees and their employees who cannot receive their pay. It is a big problem as this is happening during the end of the month. Some of these employees need the money urgently to buy food and to pay their bills. This has caused them severe distress.

The bigger question is who is in charge? Are our monies safe? The country head’s apology has not restored Singaporeans’ faith in the national bank. Many Singaporeans are considering putting their monies in other banks to prevent such a situation from happening again.

This is a wake up call for DBS and their team of “talented” engineers.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Wednesday it will consider taking “supervisory action”. It will conduct investigations and consider the “appropriate supervisory actions”. Let’s just say, we have seen how PAP does its investigations. Will it be any different in this case of ownself check ownself?

Singaporeans have lost faith in this so-called national bank. No wonder they say DBS stands for Don’t Bull Shit!