SINGAPORE — DBS Group, Singapore’s biggest bank, raised its full-year guidance after second-quarter net profit rose 9 percent, as it leans on its wealth management business, treasury sales and trading income to drive growth.
Shares of DBS rose 3 percent to a record high of SG$75.80 after it posted a record quarterly net profit of SG$3.08 billion ($2.40 billion) that beat estimates.
“What pleased me most was the fact that we had record fees across the franchise, and it wasn’t just any particular franchise. It was really a solid quarter across all the franchises,” CEO Tan Su Shan told reporters.
She raised DBS’ 2026 outlook, saying total income was expected to exceed 2025 levels, particularly as the lender expects to ride the tailwinds of Asia’s wealth boom.
For the quarter, DBS’ wealth management fees grew 42 percent year on year to a record SG$919 million from higher customer investment activity, with wealth assets under management surpassing SG$500 billion for the first time.
Fees from treasury customer sales to wealth management and corporate customers, as well as markets trading income, also notched double-digit percentage gains year on year to drive net fee income to SG$1.46 billion, its second-highest quarterly level on record.
“Wealth management is really firing on all cylinders, and we hope to continue,” said Tan.
DBS said the stronger full-year outlook reflected a record first-half performance and its ability to remain resilient and capture opportunities despite a challenging interest-rate environment.
For the rest of the year, the bank is forecasting interest rates to remain at current levels, deposit growth to be in the high-single-digit range and its cost-income ratio to remain in the low-40-percent range.
It expects specific provisions to be within 17 to 20 basis points of loans in the second half, while general-provision reserves provide a buffer against risks.
“I hope that DBS will be the kind of company that when the chips are down, we will outperform, and we will have a lower beta and a higher alpha. But when the chips are up and things are doing well, that we should outperform,” Tan said.
Net interest margin, a key gauge of profitability, fell to 1.87 percent from 2.05 percent in the same period a year earlier, but that was offset by strong loan and deposit growth.
Other Singapore
banks to follow
DBS’ results kick off the second-quarter earnings season for Singaporean banks, with investors focused on how lenders are managing interest-rate pressure and whether wealth, transaction-banking and markets income can offset any narrowing in lending margins.
Smaller peers
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. and United Overseas Bank are scheduled to announce their results on Friday.
Asia-focused HSBC reported a 23-percent rise in first-half pretax profit driven by lending revenue and wealth management fees, while Standard Chartered posted a 9-percent increase helped by wealth management, markets and global banking.
For the second quarter, DBS announced a total dividend of 81 Singapore cents per share, up 6 Singapore cents from a year earlier.
The bank’s return on equity rose to 17.9 percent, up from 16.7 percent a year ago. reuters
