Debated in Parliament on 8 Apr 2026.
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.
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.
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