After a sterling 2024 when Singapore’s biggest bank by assets booked record net profits, DBS CEO Piyush Gupta said that the bank needs to have “agility” and “nimbleness” to navigate a “choppy” 2025 amid unpredictable tariff and monetary policies from the U.S.

Speaking in an exclusive interview to CNBC’s JP Ong, Gupta said “we are actually quite conscious of the fact that the Trump administration could use economic tools as [a] weapon, and therefore tariffs and tax policies, etc., can change.”

Gupta’s comments come as Southeast Asia’s largest bank by assets posted a solid showing in its full-year results, with net profit reaching a record high. For the financial year ended Dec. 31, the bank saw an 11% rise in full-year net profit to 11.4 billion Singapore dollars ($8.4 billion), while revenue booked a 10% increase to SG$22.3 billion.

Gupta described the performance as “great” and added that he was “quite pleased with the breadth of the performance.”

DBS attributed the increase to several factors, including a record high fee income and treasury customer sales reaching a new high. The bank’s net interest income, which is the interest a bank earns on loans minus that which it pays for deposits, rose 5% year on year to SG$15.04 billion. DBS shares surged to a record intraday high of SG$46.5 following the results.

Source: CNBC