Singapore banks face 90% onboarding bottleneck despite AI push

Banks invest in skills, not hiring.

Singapore’s corporate and investment banks are investing more heavily in internal artificial intelligence capability-building, but 90% still cite client onboarding as inefficient, according to Capgemini.

The firm said Singapore banks are shifting from hiring to building, with 40% investing in hands-on AI upskilling and 30% offering incentives to drive adoption, compared with 23% and 14% globally. Only 20% of companies are recruiting external AI talent, compared to a 40% global average.

Operational bottlenecks remain more severe than global norms in several key workflows. The firm said 80% of Singapore respondents flagged KYC and due diligence as inefficient, compared with 75% globally, whilst another 80% pointed to transaction reconciliation, compared with 63% worldwide.

Compliance was a relatively smaller concern in Singapore. Half of respondents cited regulatory and compliance monitoring as inefficient, close to the 48% global level and below Hong Kong’s 60% and Japan’s 80%.

The Singapore findings come as Capgemini’s global corporate and investment banking report showed rising competitive pressure across the sector.

It said 85% of banks’ corporate clients plan to engage a non-bank financial institution within the next 12 months, whilst only 23% said banks currently meet expectations for faster, more transparent, and responsive service.

Globally, Capgemini said banks are still struggling to convert innovation spending into results, with 82% of executives saying innovation programmes are not generating improved revenue from new products and 51% saying they have not delivered expected cost savings.

It added that only 29% of IT budgets are directed to transformative technologies, whilst 43% is still spent maintaining legacy systems.