Singapore banks up AI game in apps with expenses tracking for retail customers

Trust Bank’s new AI chatbot feature in its banking app lets customers ask questions related to their card transactions in the way they normally converse.

Published Sep 12, 2026, 05:00 AM

Updated Sep 12, 2026, 05:00 AM

Singapore banks like Trust Bank, DBS, and OCBC are launching AI chatbots in their apps to help customers track spending and manage banking tasks more easily.

These AI tools allow natural language interaction for checking transactions, rewards and wealth management, reducing manual effort and improving customer convenience.

Banks aim to cut costs, boost earnings and enhance customer service, but AI features will soon be standard rather than a unique competitive advantage.

SINGAPORE – Tracking your monthly dining, wellness or overseas spending is now as simple as asking a chatbot. With the launch of a new artificial intelligence tool in digital-only lender Trust Bank’s app , these once-manual tasks are now fully automated.

DBS Bank and OCBC Bank have plans for similar roll-outs from later this year. These AI-fuelled upgrades are the latest attempts by local banks to automate and lift customer service.

Announced on Sept 8, Trust Bank’s new AI chatbot feature in its banking app lets customers ask questions related to their card transactions in the way they normally converse. These include spending with specific merchants or overseas while on holiday, as well as spending on categories like transport and dining.

Called Trust AI Ask, the feature seeks to help customers save time from manually navigating menus, search filters or months of transaction history, said the bank, which is backed by Standard Chartered Bank and FairPrice Group.

The bank plans to extend the AI chatbot to other banking activities, including those involving information about customers’ accounts, transfers and rewards.

DBS is adding similar AI capabilities in its banking app from as early as November to allow retail customers to chat with its digibot to check refunds or reward points on their bank cards, request fee waivers, and block or replace cards.

The feature was rolled out to DBS corporate customers in July. The DBS digibot also got an upgrade in August that lets retail customers ask the virtual assistant wealth management-related queries.

Similarly, OCBC announced in July its new AI-powered app, OCBC WoW , which uses the digital likeness of employees as virtual client managers to provide wealth management services to customers.

Using voice or text, customers interact with the app’s virtual managers, which analyse customers’ investments to help them better understand their underlying exposures and sources of risk. The app is being tested among selected clients and OCBC employees.

From the end of 2026, OCBC will test an AI-powered digital companion on its banking app with selected retail banking customers. Customers can use text to interact in a conversational manner with the AI companion to get personalised transaction and banking relationship insights about account balances, transaction history, payments and other account-specific requests.

Tamma Febrian, director of financial institutions ratings at Fitch Ratings, said: “By deploying technology capable of analysing live data sets and offering more natural-language capabilities, banks can make the customer experience more seamless.”

Previous chatbot and investment advisory functionalities were designed around repetitive queries and a narrow set of rules and scenarios, which some customers found less helpful, he added.

For customers, the AI features offer convenience, said Zennon Kapron, director of fintech and payments consulting firm GL Insight. This includes potential time savings, such as requiring fewer steps to get their answers.

Called Trust AI Ask, the feature seeks to help customers save time from manually navigating menus, search filters or months of transaction history. PHOTO: TRUST BANK

Called Trust AI Ask, the feature seeks to help customers save time from manually navigating menus, search filters or months of transaction history.

Banks benefit, too. Analysts said that lenders enjoy cost savings if AI can, for example, help resolve customer queries that are not routed to customer service or relationship managers. Customer queries also provide data – like what customers care about – that banks can act on, such as by cross-selling services.

Still, the AI features in bank apps are not entirely new, and the banks know it, said Kapron. He pointed out how category breakdowns, spend trackers and investment nudges have been in banking apps since UOB launched its AI-powered Mighty app in 2019.

Phillip Securities research manager Glenn Thum said what has changed is how customers interact with the apps. Instead of a bank deciding which spending categories to show customers, customers ask questions in their own words to get a reply. This sounds incremental but it lowers the barrier to entry for customers to understand their financial data, he said.

The cost of putting a natural-language layer over existing data the banks hold also fell with AI. “That is why three banks can have AI features within a few months of each other,” said Kapron. “The transaction data has been sitting in these apps for a decade and what the banks have built is a new front door on a house they finished years ago.”

Thum added that low interest rates have compressed net interest margins, so AI in bank apps is a cheaper way to help boost lenders’ earnings growth through cost savings, wealth management services and fee income from bank services.

But as adoption of these AI features becomes more widespread across the sector, Febrian said they become “an increasingly expected utility for banks to offer, rather than a structural competitive advantage that could meaningfully boost their franchises”.

Agreeing, Thum added: “What really matters is whether the AI initiatives translate into good cost-to-income ratios, product sales or deposit stickiness.”

Banks and financial institutions

AI/artificial intelligence

Trust Bank 在其银行应用程序中推出的全新 AI 聊天机器人功能，让客户能够以日常对话的方式询问与银行卡交易相关的问题。

发布于 2026 年 9 月 12 日上午 5:00

更新于2026年9月12日凌晨5:00

新加坡的 Trust Bank、星展银行和华侨银行等银行正在其应用程序中推出人工智能聊天机器人，以帮助客户更轻松地跟踪支出和管理银行业务。

这些人工智能工具支持自然语言交互，可用于检查交易、奖励和财富管理，从而减少人工操作，提高客户便利性。

银行的目标是降低成本、提高收益和改善客户服务，但人工智能功能很快将成为标准配置，而不是独特的竞争优势。

新加坡——追踪每月餐饮、健康或海外消费如今只需询问聊天机器人即可轻松完成。随着纯数字贷款机构Trust Bank在其应用程序中推出全新人工智能工具，这些曾经需要人工操作的任务如今已实现全面自动化。

星展银行和华侨银行计划从今年晚些时候开始推出类似的升级方案。这些人工智能驱动的升级是本地银行为实现客户服务自动化和提升服务水平而做出的最新尝试。

Trust Bank于9月8日宣布在其银行应用程序中推出全新的AI聊天机器人功能，让客户能够以日常对话的方式询问与银行卡交易相关的问题。这些问题包括在特定商户消费、海外度假消费，以及交通和餐饮等类别的消费。

该银行表示，这项名为 Trust AI Ask 的功能旨在帮助客户节省手动浏览菜单、搜索过滤器或查找数月交易历史记录的时间。该银行由渣打银行和职总平价集团支持。

该银行计划将人工智能聊天机器人扩展到其他银行业务，包括涉及客户账户信息、转账和奖励的业务。

星展银行最早将于 11 月在其银行应用程序中添加类似的 AI 功能，允许零售客户与数字机器人聊天，以查询银行卡的退款或奖励积分、申请费用豁免以及冻结或更换银行卡。

该功能于7月面向星展银行企业客户推出。星展银行智能助手（digibot）也在8月进行了升级，允许零售客户向其咨询与财富管理相关的问题。

同样，华侨银行 (OCBC) 在 7 月份宣布推出其新的人工智能应用程序 OCBC WoW，该应用程序使用员工的数字形象作为虚拟客户经理，为客户提供财富管理服务。

客户可通过语音或文字与应用程序的虚拟经理互动，这些虚拟经理会分析客户的投资，帮助他们更好地了解其潜在风险敞口和风险来源。该应用程序目前正在部分客户和华侨银行员工中进行测试。

从2026年底开始，华侨银行将在其银行应用程序中面向部分零售银行客户测试一款人工智能数字助手。客户可以通过文字与人工智能助手进行对话式互动，获取个性化的交易和银行关系信息，包括账户余额、交易记录、付款信息以及其他账户相关需求。

惠誉评级金融机构评级主管塔玛·费布里安表示：“通过部署能够分析实时数据集并提供更多自然语言功能的技术，银行可以使客户体验更加顺畅。”

他补充说，以前的聊天机器人和投资咨询功能是围绕重复性查询和一组狭窄的规则和场景设计的，一些客户觉得这些功能不太有帮助。

金融科技和支付咨​​询公司GL Insight的董事Zennon Kapron表示，对于客户而言，人工智能功能带来了便利。这包括节省时间，例如减少获取答案的步骤。

这项名为“Trust AI Ask”的功能旨在帮助客户节省手动浏览菜单、搜索筛选器或查找数月交易记录的时间。图片：TRUST BANK

这项名为 Trust AI Ask 的功能旨在帮助客户节省手动浏览菜单、搜索筛选器或查找数月交易历史记录的时间。

银行也能从中受益。分析师表示，如果人工智能能够帮助解决那些无需转接到客服或客户经理的客户咨询，贷款机构就能节省成本。客户咨询还能提供数据——例如客户关心什么——银行可以利用这些数据采取相应行动，例如交叉销售服务。

卡普隆表示，银行应用程序中的人工智能功能并非全新事物，银行对此也心知肚明。他指出，早在2019年大华银行推出人工智能驱动的Mighty应用程序时，类别细分、消费追踪和投资建议等功能就已经出现在银行应用程序中了。

菲利普证券研究经理格伦·瑟姆表示，改变的是客户与应用程序的互动方式。以前是由银行决定向客户展示哪些消费类别，现在客户可以用自己的语言提出问题并获得解答。他表示，这看似微不足道，但却降低了客户理解自身财务数据的门槛。

随着人工智能的出现，在银行现有数据上叠加自然语言层的成本也随之降低。“这就是为什么三家银行能在短短几个月内相继推出人工智能功能的原因，”卡普隆说道。“交易数据已经在这些应用程序中存放了十年之久，银行所做的，就像是在一栋多年前就已建成的房子上安装了一扇新的大门。”

Thum补充说，低利率压缩了净息差，因此，银行应用程序中的人工智能是一种更便宜的方式，可以通过节省成本、财富管理服务和银行服务费用收入来帮助提高贷款机构的盈利增长。

但随着这些人工智能功能在整个行业中得到更广泛的应用，费布里安表示，它们正逐渐成为“银行理应提供的实用功能，而不是能够切实提升其业务的结构性竞争优势”。

Thum对此表示赞同，并补充道：“真正重要的是人工智能举措能否转化为良好的成本收入比、产品销售或存款粘性。”

银行和金融机构

人工智能