DBS hires ex-Stan Chart head to lead one of its most important teams

DBS has hired Sew Bun Foong, the former deputy chief executive of GovTech Singapore, as its group head of technology services. Technology veteran Foong, who joined DBS earlier this month at managing director level, spent about 18 months at the public sector tech body, leading its ‘Smart Nation’ policy initiatives.

At DBS, Foong is in charge of infrastructure strategy and engineering, infrastructure control and change management, collaborative user services, access management, and the COO function for technology services, according to his LinkedIn profile.

It’s also likely that Foong will have plenty of recruitment responsibilities on his plate. DBS has 163 Singapore-based technology and digital vacancies on its careers site right now, representing about 39% of its local vacancies. In the year to end-September 2019, more than 60% of the 1,563 new jobs created at DBS were in tech, according to the bank’s Q3 results.

Foong has moved to DBS on the back of recent finance sector experience, having worked for Standard Chartered between 2016 and 2018 as its Singapore-based global head of digital transformation for retail, private banking and wealth.

As we’ve previously reported, tech professionals with digital transformation experience are in high demand and short supply in the Singapore banking sector. Last August, for example, Wai Lam Sham, previously a director of corporate strategy and transformation for Deutsche, joined DBS as an executive director for digital value capture.

Foong worked for IBM from 2000 to 2016, latterly as a distinguished engineer and lead cloud advisor, focused on fields such as cloud computing, analytics, big data, and security.

In a career dating back to the late 1980s, Foong has also worked in senior technology roles at OCBC and Raffles Medical Group, and has held a number of part-time and full-time academic positions, including his current post as an Adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore.

Photo by Kirill Petropavlov on Unsplash

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Email: smortlock@efinancialcareers.com or Telegram: @simonmortlock

We are on Telegram! Join us now