With prolonged global trade disruptions accelerating the demand for digital services to strengthen supply chains, DBS has increased efforts on digitalising financing capabilities offered through trade platforms, potentially benefiting more than 15,000 SMEs across Asia by end 2022.
According to the DBS Digital Readiness Survey, 97% of businesses in Asia-Pacific have indicated that they are facing external pressure to transform digitally, citing growing supply chain complexities as one of the push factors for change.
However, the speed of change in the surrounding macro and business environment, coupled with high costs of adopting new technologies, remain often cited hurdles to digitalisation.
To support businesses in adapting to the evolving landscape characterised by prolonged trade disruptions and geopolitical tensions, DBS is set to launch five new platform partnerships in 2022.
These platforms will have integrated digital and supply chain financing capabilities which are expected to benefit SMEs across Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India and Indonesia by the end of this year.
Sectors that will benefit from the launch of the upcoming digital platforms include e-commerce, logistics and commodities, among others.
DBS currently partners with large and established anchors in multiple sectors including technology, media and telecom, apparels, consumer products, food & agriculture, automotive and logistics, to provide competitive digital financing options to their network of suppliers and/ or distributors through digital trade platforms.
More than nine in 10 of the bank’s supply chain finance transactions across Asia were carried out through digital platforms last year. These efforts translated to DBS registering robust growth in revenue from trade ecosystems which doubled year-on-year in 2021.
These collective efforts are in line with the bank’s strategy to further catalyse the development and adoption of digital trade platforms and embedded digital financing solutions across industries to bolster the resilience of supply chains.
