In August 2024, Bank of Singapore, in collaboration with OCBC Group Operations & Technology and Group Data Office, embarked on a transformative journey to streamline the Source of Wealth (“SoW”) write-up process for client onboarding and maintenance review. With support from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”) Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (“FSTI”) grant, this Proof-of-Concept (“PoC”) leverages Generative AI to enhance risk effectiveness and risk efficiency for SoW writeup.
Background and problem statement
Onboarding high-net-worth individuals in private banking demands a rigorous and highly tailored due diligence process. A critical process component is the preparation of the SoW write-up, which requires clear, accurate and plausible narrative describing our client’s wealth accumulation journey. This complex task is inherently resource-intensive and faces several key challenges, namely:
Compliance with stringent regulatory requirements: Financial institutions must ensure all SoW narratives adhere to strict and evolving regulatory standards, including those set by MAS. Extensive human oversight required to interpret and apply compliance guidelines on verification of documentation, ensuring narratives are accurate and plausible when subjected to scrutiny—adding further complexity and operational burden .
In view of the above challenges, Bank of Singapore identified a strategic opportunity to adopt Generative AI to modernise the SoW authoring process.
This solution leverages Generative AI to enhance productivity, ensure risk-proportionate assessments, and uphold principles of Materiality, Prudence, and Relevance as outlined in the MAS circular on establishing source of wealth of customers issued on 26 July 2024.
Solution overview
The PoC presents the integration of Generative AI technology to automate the write-ups of SoW. This advancement provides a baseline, well-structured and consistent standard for RMs to build upon and complete a reasonable and risk-proportionate SoW write-up. This solution could also be positioned as a strategic tool to ensure new RMs are guided by the Bank’s compliance standards in addition to the risk training they have undergone.
The implementation is structured according to the following solution design.
Figure 1: Solution Overview
Key features include:
Figure 2: Agentic AI Framework
4. Data-driven comparison: Leveraging proprietary data from OCBC Group to compare the client’s wealth accumulation against industry peers, geographic regions and professional designation.
5. Human Validation: Ensuring accuracy and alignment with MAS guidelines through control function review.
Implementation framework
The project followed a structured approach:
Collaboration structure
A key success factor of this initiative was the strong cross-functional collaboration among specialised teams, each contributing critical expertise to the project’s success.
Bank of Singapore’s Financial Crime Compliance Platform & Analytics Team: This team of subject-matter experts and project managers led the initiative, identifying the inefficiencies in the SoW write-up process and envisioning how Generative AI could address them. They defined the compliance requirements, outlined edge cases (e.g., complex client profiles), and ensured that the AI-generated narratives adhered to regulatory standards.
Bank of Singapore’s Operations and Technology Department: The IT Architecture and Engineering team provided the technological foundation for the PoC. They were responsible for integrating the LLM into the Bank’s infrastructure, establishing secure development and testing environments, and ensuring seamless workflow integration with existing onboarding systems.
OCBC Group Data Office: As the AI and data science centre of excellence within the OCBC Group, this team played a pivotal advisory role. Their data scientists and engineers supported model selection, fine-tuning, and performance evaluation. They also ensured the project adhered to OCBC’s AI governance framework, including alignment with MAS’s FEAT (Fairness, Ethics, Accountability, Transparency) principles.
Focus User Group: This user group consists of Financial Crime Compliance and 1.5 Line of Defence Reviewers who are the reviewers for the SoW assessment. Their responsibility is to co-create the solution ensure the acceptance baseline standard which consequently leads to user adoption.
Pilot RM User Group: This pilot group comprises RMs who are the end users of the AI solution. Pilot RM users were empowered to have the firsthand experience in writing SoWs using AI. Their early feedback of the solution has proven to be invaluable and critical for model refinement to ensure high user adoption.
Steering Committee and oversight: A governance body comprising senior leaders from Financial Crime Compliance, 1.5 Line of Defence, IT, and the Group Data Office provided strategic oversight. This committee reviewed project milestones, managed risks, and established clear go/no-go criteria for transitioning from PoC to pilot or production.
The project was executed using an agile methodology, with regular cross-functional workshops to iterate on the model’s performance and incorporate feedback from frontline compliance users.
Ultimately, the success of this initiative was driven by a shared vision and a spirit of collaboration. Bringing together the front office, 1.5 Line of Defence, Compliance, Technology, and Data Science teams, Bank of Singapore was able to deliver a transformative solution that not only met regulatory obligations but also set a new benchmark for innovation in financial compliance.
Early results and key learnings
As the PoC nears completion, Bank of Singapore has gathered a wealth of insights on the performance of the Generative AI approach and the practical considerations of deploying it in a compliance setting.
Here are some results and learnings:
Limitations discovered
Initially, the system struggled with scanned PDFs, which lack extractable text. To address this, we integrated a Visual Language Model (“VLM”) capable of interpreting and extracting text from image-based documents. This significantly improved the system’s ability to handle non-machine-readable inputs. However, the VLM’s performance is still limited by the quality of the scans. poorly scanned or low-resolution documents continue to pose challenges, often resulting in partial or inaccurate extraction.
Journey beyond PoC
Bank of Singapore’s Generative AI PoC demonstrates the powerful combination of human expertise and artificial intelligence. It has significantly improved a process that was traditionally seen as laborious and time-consuming. By using AI to generate initial drafts of compliance narratives, the Bank has standardised the SoW write-up and consequently shorten the preparation duration by 20% to 50%.
Importantly, early results show that baseline quality draft and speed in the preparation and review process can go hand in hand. In a nutshell, with strong governance, human oversight, and well-defined controls, the AI system maintains the high standards required for regulatory compliance while improving operational efficiency.
A key driver of this progress is the feedback loop built into the AI workflow. Feedback from RMs and reviewers are captured and used to improve the model. Bank of Singapore is developing a structured approach to harness these insights, allowing the AI to be fine-tuned and retrained to better understand context and regulatory expectations. This continuous learning process will help the model become more accurate, consistent, and aligned with real-world use cases.
The Bank also sees potential for broader adoption across departments within the OCBC Group, creating opportunities to standardise and streamline compliance documentation at scale. With the continued support of MAS, this initiative reflects a responsible and forward-looking approach to innovation in financial services. It shows that compliance can be both effective and efficient when supported by the right technology and governance.
This marks the beginning of a broader transformation. Bank of Singapore envisions AI as a trusted partner in compliance—supporting professionals, improving oversight, and helping to build a more responsive and resilient financial ecosystem.
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