SINGAPORE – DBS Group Holdings on Monday (Oct 25) announced the appointment of Mr Soh Kian Tiong as chief risk officer (CRO) with effect from Nov 4.
In his new role, Mr Soh will report to DBS CEO Piyush Gupta and also be accountable to the bank’s board risk management committee. In addition, he will be a member of the group management committee, as well as the group executive committee.
Mr Soh takes over from current CRO Tan Teck Long, who will be leaving the bank to return to a customer facing role, said DBS.
“Under Teck Long’s leadership, DBS has further enhanced our credit underwriting capabilities, multi-year credit architecture programme, and strengthened our attention on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) risks, financial crime risk, and cyber security and data protection,” said DBS CEO Piyush Gupta. “While he will be sorely missed, we respect his desire to return to a customer-facing role. “
Mr Gupta said Mr Soh’s appointment “is testament to our ability to groom leaders from within.”
A career DBS banker with over 25 years of experience in business and risk roles, Mr Soh has been based in Hong Kong as senior risk executive for DBS Hong Kong since June 2019. Concurrently, he has been chief credit officer for Greater China overseeing the bank’s credit and risk functions in Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as credit risk for Taiwan.
He is also a member of DBS Bank (Hong Kong)’s management committee and chairs the Hong Kong risk executive committee.
Mr Soh, who is Singaporean, started his career as a DBS trainee officer in 1995 in the corporate banking department. Over the span of his career, he has held progressively senior roles. These include being head of credit risk in 2009, and leading the institutional banking group’s large financial institutions, government-linked companies, and loan workout unit in 2013.
In November 2018, he became head of DBS’ financial institutions group, where he managed the global relationship coverage for all financial institutions including sovereigns and banks. He also oversaw DBS’ banking relationship with Singapore government-related entities such as GIC and Temasek.