Leading a normal life nowadays calls for having easy access to banking services, but at least the basic ones. Think of a day when you have no option to pay cheques, shop online, or receive money or pay your bills. It is a reality for many people.
Without necessary digital technologies in banking services, it is difficult prepare for the future like saving money for children’s education or marriage and ensuring a happy retirement life. This makes financial inclusion critical.
Everyone should have access to financial services. People with disabilitieshave a more difficult time discovering information on bank websites and must expend more effort, time, and energy to do it.
Digital Transformation and Future Banking
The e-banking platform has dramatically changed in recent years. Global pandemic has led to changes in consumer behaviours. The number of people using smartphones is considerably increasing and the bank account holders have become more technologically updated
The use of digital technologies in banking helps increase operational efficiency, improves client interactions, and provides customers with a more personalised experience.
Cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, blockchain, and consumer data collecting, administration, and analysis are among the emerging technologies.
Significance of Digital Inclusion
In a quickly digitising world, financial inclusion involves ensuring everyone access to information technologies to use services such as online payments, Internet banking, credit, and insurance. Furthermore, as nations throughout the world begin to recover from pandemics, digital inclusion makes financial inclusion more symbiotic.
People with impairments make up a sizable and rising proportion of the global population. One out of every five persons has an impairment that makes accessing internet information difficult.
Digital financial inclusion is recognised by the United Nations as one of the critical facilitators of 13 out of 17 SDGs to be attained by 2030. The absence of such inclusion would not only stop people from reaching their full potential but also separate people from the others in society.
While banking is widely available in wealthier societies such as Singapore, people at disadvantage, like migrant workers and the elderly are at risk of falling behind, for they find banking services unaffordable or believe digital banking is very complicated.
DBS Bank champions digital financial inclusion, ensuring that everyone has access to digital banking. It also gets ready future generations for the digital economy ahead.
Simplifying Banking with Digital Inclusion
While Singapore ranks first in digital inclusion, disparities persist across age and economic categories, particularly in digital skills and technology use.
Foreign workers help develop many Singapore homes, companies, and services, while being among the city-state’s most vulnerable people. When ‘Circuit Breaker’ limitations were enacted in April 2020, the pandemic revealed its weakness. DBS Bank, through its subsidiary POSB, assisted unbanked migrant workers in opening bank accounts in an electronic and contactless manner.
This insured that migrant workers continued to get their wages, that they could transfer money to their family back home, and that they could top up prepaid mobile cards to keep in touch remotely.
Better internet connectivity can also lead to greater work prospects as people can upgrade and develop essential skills for an increasingly digital economy.
With the rising digital technologies in banking services, DBS Bank has worked to ensure that less technologically adept populations in Singapore, such as the elderly, do not fall behind. Since 2014, DBS has assisted seniors in becoming acquainted with digital technologies by offering personalised guidance through its branches. It also collaborates with community partners to deliver literacy programmes, including education to raise fraud awareness, through workshops.
