DBS CEO Tan Su Shan took on the top job just before an economic storm struck. The veteran of the Singapore-based bank, Southeast Asia’s largest, assumed the role in March, just a few days before U.S. President Donald Trump slapped steep tariffs on much of the world economy. That posed a challenge for DBS, which serves clients across China, Southeast Asia, and India.
Her response to an uncertain economy? Diversify. “If you only sell to the U.S., you have to diversify,” Tan said at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit on Tuesday.
Last week, Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese goods by Nov. 1 in retaliation for Beijing’s expanded export controls on rare earth minerals. The U.S. president has also slapped 50% tariffs on Brazil and India, two other major non-Western economies.
On Tuesday, Tan suggested that Trump’s broad-based tariffs could be forging new links between these different economies. “China and India, historically, are not that close,” Tan said. “This might actually create more opportunities for Chinese and Indian companies to do more together, certainly on the supply chain.”
Earlier this year, China and India agreed to resume direct flights, which had been suspended since the COVID pandemic. Relations between the two economies had been cool since deadly border clashes in 2020.
“It will take time to build trust [between India and China],” Tan said Tuesday. “But the opportunities are there.”
CEO: ‘Chief energy officer’
Tan is DBS’s first-ever female CEO. She’s also No. 1 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women Asia ranking and No. 6 on its global MPW ranking.
Yet Tan downplayed that accolade on Tuesday. “I don’t know how I feel about the word ‘powerful,’” she noted. “It really is the team that gets stuff done.”
“It’s my job as a CEO to be the chief energy officer, to give energy to the team and make sure that everyone is headed in the right direction,” she said.
Learning from an airline
Onstage, Tan also recalled her early years at DBS. The institution is now Southeast Asia’s most valuable company and winner of countless awards for good digital products and customer service, but when Tan joined DBS in 2010, the bank had a decidedly different reputation.
“We were the worst bank,” Tan recalled. “Worst bank for customer service, worst bank for the longest queues, worst bank for product.”
The bank, led by then-CEO Piyush Gupta, found inspiration in Singapore’s flagship carrier, Singapore Airlines. (Both companies boast Temasek, Singapore’s state investment company, as a major shareholder.)
“We were all marshaled to Singapore Airlines’ headquarters by the airport and taught how to offer good ‘service quality,’” Tan explained. “Our first learning was: How do you give good service, and how are you respectful, easy to deal with, and dependable?”
DBS has now grown from a staid government-linked bank to a leader in the country’s banking sector. When Tan joined in 2010, DBS generated 7.1 billion Singapore dollars ($5.5 billion in current exchange rates) in total income. That figure had grown to 22.3 billion Singapore dollars ($17.2 billion) last year.
DBS shares are up by almost 35% over the past 12 months; Singapore’s other “Big Three” banks, OCBC and UOB, are up by 11% and 7%, respectively.