DBS CEO: Transforming Southeast Asian Banking, Embracing Diversity and Balancing AI with Humanity

0:00Hi everyone, I'm Nikolaj Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund. And today I'm in particularly good company because I am in Singapore and I'm speaking to Sushan, who's CEO of DBS, the largest bank in this part of the world. And not only that, Sushan is one of the most important and powerful women in global finance. So big thank you for taking the time. Yeah, I always, yeah, it's not, I'm not comfortable with that, but okay. Well, that's just a fact. That's just a fact.

0:41Sushant, DBS, tell us about it. So we were formed two, three years after Singapore was born in 1965. DBS was the Development Bank of Singapore. Really to develop Singapore in those days, we were a small, unindustrialized little island. and I guess we have evolved from our development roots now to being the largest commercial bank in Southeast Asia. But I like to use the D word because DBS, although it stands for Development Bank of Singapore, I think we have evolved. I think we've gone from being a development bank now to being a very digital bank. I like to think we are a disruptive bank, but I also want us to remain the dependable bank and also the data bank of the future.

1:26How have you helped develop Singapore? Well, in the initial days of Singapore's birth, independence in 1965, we knew that as a small country with nothing, we had no natural resources. The only thing we had were humans, were human beings. So you have to open up for trade. You have to open up for talent. So if people, goods and services, and money, financial hub, If you can build a financial hub, a trade hub, ports, you'll get people, you'll get talent, you get GDP growth, you get jobs. So that's how we started. And our early development routes, we were part of the Economic Development Board, was to grow Singapore industry.

2:08Whether it was the Port Authority of Singapore, whether it was Singapore Airlines, all the new industrial growth, growth parts, industry parts. In the 70s and 80s was a lot of manufacturing. We were financing a lot of manufacturers. We were bringing in MNCs from Europe, from your part of the world, from the US, from Japan, setting up factories here, going from kind of middle to high-end manufacturing, precision manufacturing, electronic manufacturing, and then increasingly moving into services. What do you think other countries can learn from the Singapore success story? I think the bedrock of what we do is better on trust and integrity.

2:53So, you know, in this world where the world is getting so volatile and so bifurcated and East and West and, you know, bridges are being broken, relationships are broken and the, you know, global order, the rules-based world is now no longer the case. I think if you have a jurisdiction that's number one, clean and transparent, number two, steady, and number three, open for business and rules-based. So we stay the course, we're responsible, we're open, we're transparent, we're rules-based. I think there is room for that in this volatile world. Who doesn't want a sort of stable island of stability?

3:36Israel, another set of features that make you Singaporean. What does it mean to be Singaporean?

3:46Gosh, that's a big question. But as a Singaporean born and bred here, I would say we are law-abiding. We are open-minded. We keep wanting to stay ahead. So in Singapore, we say, you know what? Have you heard of the word kia su? I'm not very familiar with this It's a Singaporean term So Kiasu is a local slang for scared to lose So it's almost like a paranoia, if you will Because we're small, we're paranoid Because if we don't keep moving forward, we'll be left behind Absolutely, well, only the paranoid survive Only the paranoid survive So we're a little bit of a Kiasu island And we keep having to evolve to stay relevant, to stay ahead So I like to kind of think that that's the Singapore DNA, in a way, another D word and hopefully that's and I think that's also the DBS DNA just keep moving forward to stay relevant but also staying responsible.

4:43Absolutely the government owns a part of you through Tamasek correct in which ways is that important? I think that gives us a validation I think it it is what I what I would like to call a Tamasek halo if you will it's stability of ownership it's also support tamasic has a strong stable of tamasic linked portfolio companies who have an ecosystem of support for each other they also get the best you know best of breed of people coming in and out so we get access to talent to ideas to disruptive technology and so their network it's not just the capital that's their network it's expertise and the support that's important.

5:31You said you wanted to be a haven in the sea of volatility. Is that really possible in today's geopolitical situation? Not easy. How do you think about it? How do you think about the geopolitical fractures and ruptures that's going on just now? I think about it as you need to be diversified. So you can't rely too much on one or the other. When the tariffs came, everyone thought, oh, shucks, if you're only selling to the US, well, you're going to be suffering badly. you're going to have to find new areas of growth. So diversify your marketplace. If you only get supplies from one country, most people get supplies from China, then you might want to diversify your supply chain as well.

6:11So China plus one. So it's diversifying. And also where you bank. If you think about high net worth families, in the past they were either banking in the West or in the US or in Switzerland or Europe or in Asia. But today, most people want to diversify. They want to have all three areas and they probably have gold. They might have used to have a lot of US dollars. Now they're thinking I might diversify into other currencies, different asset classes. So I guess the diversifier is important. But how also, you know, I think we if if the rest of the world and it does look like quite a lot of countries are still saying we want to abide by rules based global order of trade, then I would like to think that trade outside the US, TOTUS, like we call it in DBS, we call it TOTUS, TOTUS at 89 % has room to grow, has room to grow and that could be intra-Asia, it could be Asia to the Middle East, GCC countries, it could be EU to Asia, it could be within ASEAN.

7:14We see a lot of pockets of growth potential and trade outside the US and I think we should focus on that.

7:24Moving on to your personal journey, you've been with DBS for a long time. 15 years. 15 years, but you've been CEO for six months. Yeah. So what was the biggest surprise by becoming CEO? I think the fact that you have to manage so many different stakeholders. It's not just the board. And of course, I've been used to managing customers and teams and the board. But it's investors like yourself. it's the government it's a lot of media it's a lot of there's a big public persona do you think that's fun? do you like it? yes and no I mean it's fun if I get to meet people like you but it can be quite intrusive like you know there will be a lot of stories that I'll think like hmm is that even a story?

8:14you know so you know you take the good with the bad I guess comes with the territory but you have to be careful and on your guard more often than not. But having said that, it's been an honour. I mean, you know, being Singaporean, being, I guess, the first woman for DBS, not the first Singaporean, my boss, my previous boss was, but also inheriting what I think is a really good foundation and having the support of my chairman and my board and my shareholders has been good. Because you know what? Right after I took over, bang, Liberation Day happened, right? And what deliberation? So it was like, wow, okay, baptism of fire, right?

9:05And so it's been, you know, interesting. Who do you talk to if you are in doubt about things? Oh, I talk to a lot of people. I talked to, so when Liberation Day happened, I talked to a lot of my board members who opened the doors to some of the biggest, you know, US dollar traders. And I talked to shareholders. I talked to people like yourself to get a sense of what kind of prison they were using to measure risk and how they were diversifying their risk. Are you surprised by how financial markets have recovered? Yeah. I mean, it's incredible. Why do you think they have recovered so shortly? I think there's been a lot of liquidity in the markets.

9:48And I think the economic slowdown is real. I think if you look at real commercial asset growth, it's been quite tepid, right? There was a front loading of supply chain financing and trade pre-tariff. But now that's slowing down. When the pause button got pressed by Liberation Day, that led to a drop in investments. And I think that's showing up in the numbers. And as rates start to grind down, rates have been very low in Asia already. rates crashed in Asia. So there's a lot of liquidity out in these markets, particularly in Hong Kong and in Singapore. So that, I think, has spurred quite a lot of investments into financial assets.

10:25So in a way, not that surprised, but, you know, it's incredible. I mean, this wall of worry seems to have disappeared. Absolutely. Let's talk about worries. I mean, early on in your career, you demoted yourself. I did. Tell me about it. So when my boss and my chairman hired me, it was to set up the private bank. And when I came in and looked in DBS, I thought, wow, there's so much potential in the consumer bank from retail to the priority bank. And if I wanted to build a really good private bank, I can't do it standing alone. To create scale and impact, I had to be part of the consumer bank. So I asked my CEO, please downgrade me.

11:08I won't report to you. I will report to the consumer banking head. He thought it was unorthodox. He's like, why the hell do you not want to report to me when I'm the CEO? And I said, Piyush, it's the only way it's going to work is if I report to the consumer banking head and we can create a wealth continuum. And our impact can be much larger. So he said, it's unorthodox. I'll have to go back to the board. So he went back to the board. They okayed my demotion. So I joined and got demoted. One step back. What did it do to your ego? Did you think it was good for your ego? Yeah. Why? Yeah. I think, you know, in life, you often have to stick, you take one step back to take two steps forward.

11:58And it's not really, you know, at the end of the day, you don't really choose your bosses and you don't, and a title isn't that important. I think impacts are more important. Some people think differently. But don't you think? I mean, impact... No, I kind of agree with you, but some people, I suspect, in particular, men, I think, are very tied up to the title. Probably. Yeah. Hopefully, you know, less so these days as organizations become more flat. I think most people want to have impact. And if you really are impact-driven, then the title doesn't matter. If you can have huge impact with a different title, why not?

12:34That's so much more meaningful. I think that's why a lot of men think it's difficult to retire because they have such a hang-up with the title and the importance coming with the job. So well done for doing that. But then you have been instrumental in building the wealth business in DBS very successfully. What does it take to build a wealth business? I think, number one, you need to understand your customer and their needs. So Asian customers have unique Asian-specific needs. You need to understand that. Number two, you need to combine both that physical, personal relationship with a great digital platform.

13:14So digital, if you will. Number three, you need to be open architecture. What does open architecture mean? It means you're not wedded to any one product provider. You want to have an open shelf so you can get the best. If you like the US market, find the best US fund manager. if you like long short or you like, you know, whatever, whatever products you like, make an open architecture so that you can really look the customer in the eye and say, I'm getting you the best of breed, or at least what I think is the best of breed today for your needs. Because if you manufacture and you sell your own product, it could be a conflict of interest.

13:52Per definition, you deal with very wealthy people, right? Any reflections on the common characteristics of wealthy people? very different gosh you know depends on first second third generation when they were born what they went through but i would say asia wealth is generally a bit younger than european or american wealth and so a lot of the wealth creation has been from their business either they just ipo'd or they've invested well in their business or they've done well in real estate etc So it's fairly concentrated and fairly chunky. So for you to be relevant to their wealth, you really need to understand how was your wealth created?

14:35Was it in shipping? Was it in warehousing? Was it in real estate? Was it in technology? And then when you understand how the wealth was created, then you can kind of get into what are the real needs for your family office or for your personal wealth. Very often, Asian wealth remains pretty concentrated. If they know and love technology, they want to be in technology, right? So you kind of also have to play your role as the trusted advisor to say, really, there's a lot of correlation risks in your portfolio right now. Do you want to diversify into a different currency or different sector, for example?

15:08The fact that the wealth is more recent, newer, more concentrated, more entrepreneurial, what does that mean in terms of how wealthy Asians are different from wealthy Europeans? Well, I think a lot of them, you know, are going through that business transition today. So if their businesses are now moving from the first founding family, first founding generation to the next, you're now seeing a real change, right? So number one, some of them might have children that want to take over. Some don't. And if they don't, then they will need a solution to sell their business or to find a solution for a liquidity solution.

15:47generation. And then you've got the next generation and all they're thinking about is digital assets, you know, tokenized assets, you know, crypto assets, whatever, or the MAG-7, right? I mean, I was listening to your podcast and there's a lot of talk about, you know, investing in tech, but the concentration of the new generation wealth in the MAG-7 is huge. And so how do you manage that, right? So the second generation tends to be more global. The first generation tends to be more local or regional, if you will. So being able to toggle that move, provide a solution, because if the first generation thinks I need to sell, then you have to help them sell, whether it's an IPO or a trade sale.

16:27The second generation comes in, how do you structure? Then the third generation are coming in, what do you do for them? So it is a journey. And also for Asians, a lot of us come from, we have currencies that are quite volatile, right? You know, you think about the rupee, the rupiah, the RMB, SYNC dollar, Hong Kong dollar. There's multiple currencies, some more liquid than others. So we also have to think about how do you protect your currencies as well. When you look around here and you see the work ethics and how hard people work, the kind of entrepreneurial spirit and so on, and you compare this with Europe, what are your reflections?

17:15I can't say you don't have to be politically correct you know I'm not an expert I can't say I'm an expert on the European work ethic okay so let's just let's just put it out there but I've been impressed by the creativity and innovation of Europe and I would say that Asians tend to work longer hours that's true on average um and and you're right it's a work ethic that's kind of drummed into us into our culture from when we were young you know your parents tell you you must work hard um you go to school your teachers say you must work hard you start your first job your bosses you know you got to work hard 996 and all that so the work ethic is is is is pretty strong um But having said that, you know what, I think there is a change now.

18:05And you look at how much time people spend on gaming, for example, the young people, not just even adults, young adults or middle-aged adults, are also spending a lot of time on gaming. I mean, like video games and gaming consoles, the socializing and their virtual games as well. there's a lot of the move of Asian pop culture now whether it's K-pop or Demon Hunter type of animation along with pop music, along with gaming along with the blockchain and new generative AI I think the Asian culture is evolving really quickly and for us to stay ahead we've got to look at how our young how our teenagers and young people are kind of morphing.

18:56The young Asian is quite different from their grandparents and their parents, honestly. And that's exciting. We need to stay ahead. So, for example, I've been telling my colleagues and I have been trying to figure out how do we create banking solutions for the gaming population, for example. And we're setting up how do we create banking relationships with teenagers, for example. How do we also create a whole banking ecosystem for those of us who love the digital asset ecosystem, for example. So these are all new tracks, right? Which if you want to stay relevant, you've got to learn. Absolutely.

19:29And I think Asians, by and large, are quite agile.

19:39How would you describe the DBS corporate culture? I would say our corporate culture has evolved, But what hasn't changed is really the purpose that binds us. The development roots that we have means that, you know, we are bounded by a culture and our purpose of just doing the right thing. Like, if you know you're doing the right thing, you don't, there's no need to explain yourself. Let's say I start working here. I'm lucky enough to get a job. I work here for a couple of weeks. Just how would I feel differently here than I would in an American firm, you think? Okay. I mean, first of all, Asia is our home.

20:19We're an Asian bank. So the difference is this is our home. We're not going to be upping and we don't go and leave when the chips are down. We stay. We are a stayer. We are a stayer. So we are committed. So when we say we're going to be in this country, we're in this country. Whether it's Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, and the rest of the Asian markets that we're in, we're in. We're committed. That's our home. So that's one difference. The second is, I guess, it's the digital DNA that we have. So it's don't be scared to experiment, right? And don't be scared to tell the boss she's wrong.

21:03And you have something here in the meeting room. So we're in a meeting room now. What is this raccoon thing? So my raccoon, our raccoon, it's spelled W-R-E-C-K-O-O-N. But it sounds like a raccoon, like the animal. But we empower our young analysts or any staff, whether they're in a meeting with a senior like me or any other bosses, they have a right to put their hand up and say, I want to raccoon your idea. I don't like your idea. I want to have that psychological safety to tear your idea down. And speak up because if you don't, then you're not doing your job. So we have meeting mojos as well.

21:40Mojo is spelled M-O-J-O, the meeting owner and the joyful observer, J-O. So the meeting owner sets the agenda. The joyful observer has the right to say, hang on, we're going down the wrong path or hang on, let's get more voices in the room to be heard. So I would like to think that at DBS, we empower people to speak up and no matter how junior, your voice is heard because that's embedded in our processes and in our culture. How do you maintain this culture of innovation in a 40 ,000 people company? Not easy. But a lot of it is just practice, practice, practice, do, fail, fail fast, move on. So what I inherited as CEO is really a digital mode and a data mode.

22:25So we started the data lake in 2016 called ADA. And we changed the way we managed to manage through customer journeys. So as opposed to vertical product journeys, it's customer journeys. Account opening is a journey. Applying for a loan is a journey. Getting a transaction done is a journey. Doing a supply chain financing is a journey. So when you organise around journeys and you have data, live data dashboards that informs you, the turnaround time is too slow, the customer is complaining, the system is hanging, oh, the pricing is wrong, oh, the customer likes the journey, oh, they're buying more products now.

22:59So having that feedback loop, we have screens in all our meeting rooms because we check the data all the time. We try and have data-informed meetings, so it's stand-ups, quick meetings, and we call it managing through journeys. And I think the way we manage the data lake that we have has enabled us to create that framework in which we now bring in new stuff, right? So you're telling me about agenting AI? Okay, I'll bring it into my MTJ, my journey, my customer journey. Generative AI? Okay, I'll bring it into my journey and now watch the feedback loop on the machine. How does the customer like it?

23:35Are they liking it? Does it work? Does it not work? Where did you learn this obsession with the client satisfaction? Oh, we just keep... Oh, gosh. You know, that was in 20... A long time ago, about 15, 14 years ago, when we first joined, we were the worst bank for service, like Lars. And you know where we went? How bad was it? Bad. So you know who's the best in Singapore? Singapore Airlines, right? Singapore Airlines is... Yeah, so we went to Changi. We went and we learned... Changi is the airport. Changi is the airport, but near the airport, there's something called SQ, called service quality, run by the wonderful folks at Singapore Airlines.

24:16And we call it red. I wear red and black a lot because that's our colors. But red stands for respectful, E, easy to deal with, and D, dependable. So Asian cultures, we have to be respectful right so we learned that from sia like you know how when they serve you if they're sure they turn the glass and yeah no no they look you they give you eye level they don't look down on you and if you're angry they they've taught us how to at least accept and acknowledge the fact that the customer's not happy have acceptance and acknowledge it and be respectful in how you deal with them um and then be easy to deal with don't make life very difficult you're sometimes banking, going to a bank is like worse than going to a dentist, right?

24:58So we try to make the banking journey as painless and as joyful as possible. And then dependable, which is, you know, when you need us most, don't remove the umbrella. You know, when it's raining, you know, come up with the umbrella and help us through COVID, through all the tough times. But I mean, it's not like just you take the whole staff to the airport and train them in one day, right? No, it's an evolving journey. It's an evolving journey. And how did you manage to change an organization? So you have a lot of these ambassadors. Actually, you know what? We actually hired quite a lot of retired SIA staff.

25:36And we put them in our branches. And you create pride. It's like Ritz Carlton, ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. We want our staff to be proud. You come to work and you're happy and you're proud to be working for DBS, for POSB. and we want it's that Asian culture of treating people with respect especially if they're older than you it's really an Asian sort of culture but also learning from each other so when we have red heroes we got red stories I just wrote a thank you to someone who's been with us for 40 years and she got so many compliments from our staff, from our clients and I said you're my ambassador and she is our ambassador, you know.

26:24And so it's having all these service ambassadors show the younger stuff, you know, this is the way forward. Are there any other companies you're learning from or any other people? All the time. We learn from, you know, anyone from, I don't want to upset anyone by missing them out, but all the big tech companies, we're constantly learning. You know, whether they're from China, from the US, from India, wherever, we bring them in, we spend time with them, we learn from them, we go and visit them. Korea, for example, we've always been really, you know, inspired by what we see in Korea, whether it's, you know, Hanna Bank, Kakao, you know, Naver, obviously Amazon, AWS, Google, Microsoft, we're spending a lot of time with the AI guys, the generative AI guys as well.

27:14And of course, in the banking industry, you know, ING is a great, great example of how they were managing through journeys a lot earlier than us, right? So given all this, what do you think DBS will look like in five to 10 years' time? How are you going to be different? Our aim is to be the best AI-enabled bank with a heart. So we're still human. I still believe that humans want human-to-human relationships. But a lot of the mundane, boring work, like writing reports, filling up KYC forms and doing mundane transactions can be done by an AI or a bot. And it can be done more accurately, probably, by an AI or a bot.

27:55But keep those human-to-human relationships, keep those customer relationships, take out the mundane work, but also have empathy and have respect for our customers and stay there for the long term. Let's drill down a bit more on the AI side. Last year, you said that you saved$750 million on the use of AI. Just how have you made the bank AI ready? What's the key to get the savings out? So do you remember, Nikolai, what I said about managing through journeys and using data dashboards to measure? So we do a lot of A-B testing. So send an offer this way, don't send an offer. Price it this way, don't price it this way.

28:34So all these A-B testing, we put it into our dashboards and there's an instant feedback loop. Customer liked it, didn't like it. Transacted, didn't transact. And that is instructive. So the incremental revenue for all the nudges that we give out to customers gets captured by this A-B testing. And that is what we measure as a sign of whether the machine learning is working, whether the AI is working. And so that was$750 ,000 last year, hopefully over a billion this year in incremental revenue. How do you get people to really use it properly in the organization? Because it's difficult to get people to change habits.

29:11It is. How do you do it? well just you know really keep nagging them

29:22right and making it okay you know what the key is to make it um first of all as the boss you have to do it totally right and i remember in 2012 when i tried to digitize the wealth business um i realized i can't just leave it to my digital head i have to as a business owner own the wireframes, own the UX, own the app, your own end-to-end journeys. And I think it's making everyone in the organization own their own journey, make them proud that, oh, you know, my app that I came up with, the experiment that I came up with worked, right? So we all went through the process of trying to make our own app.

29:59And now we're making, make sure everyone goes through the process of doing your own generative AI journey. And just learn by doing. Don't learn theoretically, learn by doing. Make your mistakes, share your mistakes. And more importantly, if you had a good idea and you worked it and it worked, share it. So like I was in Taiwan last week, you know, Taiwan, we bought the, you know, Citibank's wealth and cards business. The cards team, cards team said, oh, we're experimenting with converting our service calls to our card customers into text. So voice converted to text. And in that conversation, the service staff was saying, oh, you know, madam, do you need an estate plan?

30:44Have you thought about your children or your grandchildren? How are you planning for the future? And when we turn that voice to text, it goes into the AI machine learning model. It comes up with a propensity score, which then instructs us, oh, this is a potential wealth client or not. and it's quite, you know what? It actually works. The journey works really well. The customer gets called if they have a high score and they are converted to a wealth customer. How do you think the AI will change the business in the long term? It will change the way we work. In what ways? I think the way we organize, you know, because right now, as I said, there's a workflow and the work process.

31:23But if the AI takes out a lot of the mundane work, it could be reading documentary trade. It could be writing the report, writing the call report. they could be spitting out the pitch book. I don't know. It could be a lot of things. And some of these jobs will move. So for example, I told you the service center now, a lot of the service calls can actually be answered by a very good generative AI enabled bot in your post login. So if we can do that and do it well, soon you can have agents that do transactions for you, right? So it's a matter of time before that happens. So if that happens, then a lot of those jobs will disappear.

32:01What does it mean for our service center people? Is they have to do something else. So in fact, they were the ones that said to me, you know what, this job's gone. I'm going to do something else. And as it is, I have 200 ,000 SME clients. Not everyone has a relationship manager. Hey, wouldn't it be great for all of them to have a relationship manager? So hello, if you used to do service, can you now be a relationship manager? can you now look after the SME clients? So then you basically will own a pool of clients that hitherto had no relationship managers. Do you remember what I said about human-to-human interaction?

32:36I think this enables a lot more human-to-human interaction whilst the mundane job gets done by a bot.

32:47Talking about human-to-human interaction and moving on to your leadership style, how would you characterize your leadership style? Inclusive. hopefully empathetic curious why is that important is it important I don't know if it's important but I like to learn and you know whether it's learning about gaming or the digital asset ecosystem or about healthcare or whatever I think learning keeps like I think you're a learner too I can see that You're definitely very curious. And I think if the leader is curious and they're open-minded and they learn, then that keeps the company relevant and moving forward.

33:36How has your leadership style changed with experience and age? With age, I guess I've learned to be more straightforward. So just say it as it is, tell the bad news up front. so if if it's a deal I don't want to do you get a no from me quite quickly so I don't waste your time and you don't waste mine

34:06how has it evolved I think I have become a better communicator I've learned to frame my ideas first think big and then go small then delve small so think about that helicopter view what does the world look like where do we want to play what do we not want to do i think about what we don't want to do a lot which is as important as what you want to do and then delve into the details you are known for working extremely hard i think i heard a story that you even brought your bloomberg terminal to the hospital when you were giving birth that was because i had a margin call in those days there was no bloom i didn't have there was no smartphones right so we had to bring our laptop with all those Bloomberg stickers.

34:52Do you expect other women in DBS to work as hard as you do? You know, I think if you love your job, you don't think, you don't see it as work. No. And it's fun and you enjoy it. So we don't dictate hours and we're quite flexible. You know, men or women, you have a kid, please, you know, stay at home, look after your kid. If you need to go to a concert for your child, please. If you have an aging parent, please look after them. So we're not dictatorial about FaceTime. And do I expect women to work as hard as me? There are a lot who work harder than me, and there are others who don't. And it's fine as long as we have outcomes to show.

35:36Who are we to dictate what kind of work they do? You mentioned the importance of being both direct and empathetic. Is there a trade-off between the two? Is there a trade-off between being direct and being empathetic? I think you can be direct and still empathetic. Because if you're not direct, then you're not being empathetic, right? Because you could be beating around the bush and wasting the time. That's not showing empathy. I've heard you talk about reverse mentoring. Why is that important? Because you need to look at the trends going forward. And as you age, you may create that intergenerational gap.

36:15And like the Koreans always say, you want to identify the future trend, look at your teenagers. So having, you know, surrounding yourself with young people, making sure they teach you what's going on, what are the trends, what are they seeing, keeps you relevant and keeps you fresh. You said you were a learner. What are you trying to learn now? now hmm I'm well obviously I've been trying to learn a lot about how Gen AI and agentic AI works that's for both you know I'm curious and I and I need to learn that for work I'm also now trying to learn about gaming and how because I don't game but I think it's important to enter the gamers ecosystem so I'm trying to learn about that what's Twitch and Discord and these communities and how they can play a game and talk to each other at the same time and how that community evolves.

37:08And why do you need to learn that? It's just as, you know, when we were growing up, we were playing and going to movies and stuff and people thought maybe our parents said, oh, don't go to movies or don't spend too much time on TV or movies. But actually it became very big industries. Content became a very big part of our world. you know gaming is now already a big part of the the the new generation but it could be something else um and also in a time where a lot of mundane work gets done by robots i think there will be this unleashing of creativity upon us so being creative is important and so left brain right brain i think ceos need to have both right so let's so now you want to learn about gaming how do you do that?

37:56So it's like, hey, I wake up, it's just like, hey, I'm Sushant, I want to learn about gaming. Where do you take it from there? So yesterday, I invited the former CEO of the biggest gaming company in Korea and Japan for lunch. I made him sit down with me for a poor guy, an hour and a half, and I was like, explain to me, what is the guy thinking of when they go into the game? And he's like, you really don't know? So I don't know. You know, what are the games that are horde today and he gave me the names and then what do they do how much is the console and what kind of chair do they sit on and how much time do they spend and then they shared with me what was fishing do you know what's fishing i don't know you see you can fish in a game okay you can go fishing what is it doing it's when you can you can date a friend you can say to another friend hey let's go fishing so you're actually in the game and you actually go and fish in the game you're literally fishing and it's a quiet moment and and people do dates virtual dates fishing in a game i clearly need to learn about gaming talking about quiet time you also meditate together well i had a bad spat in my life um in my mid to late 20s um when i lost my job i lost my home i I lost my then relationship and I thought my world was going to crumble down upon me.

39:25And that's when I learned, some friends of mine taught me to meditate because it enabled me to see myself as a third party, to see the world as it was and to realize, you know what, calm yourself down. The world isn't so bad. You got your health, you got your family, you got your friends, you know everything else will be okay and i found it very useful to kind of detach myself from my own situation to see myself from third-party eyes and to calm myself down and to tell myself you know it's going to be okay so whilst i don't have a lot of time to meditate nowadays i should do i do have i do yoga i go for long runs i listen to a lot of podcasts um i'm more of a a listener than a reader.

40:15I love listening and I love music. So those quiet moments, I think when you take yourself out of your everyday noise, just to see things from a third party perspective, it gives you perspective. This period you talk about, what do you think it did to you as a person? It made me more resilient. It made me appreciate the ups with the downs. it made me realize that when things are very good don't lose your head when things are very bad don't lose your heart well these are good pieces of advice now you also talk about often the importance of sleep yes tell me about it do you know who is oh Ariana Huffington do you know her?

41:04I don't know her I know of her the Huffington Post we invited her here to give a talk to my colleagues and I and she proudly went on stage and said sleep your way to the top and of course we all laughed but what she meant was in the old days it meant something different I know right but what she obviously meant was if you have good sleep you perform well absolutely you perform well you do well your company does well you get promoted your company does well the company you know goes up in value it's a win-win situation for everyone and it's true right don't you feel like i have a nap in the middle of the day so i wish i could what time do you have roughly two to three in the afternoon two to three yeah that's a good so do you have a so i really believe in this sleep your sleeping weight to the top i really believe in that well you're at the top so do you have a bed in your room yeah i have a sofa you have a sofa so you sleep from two so two thirty to three is your quiet time well yeah uh so i do like 15 20 minutes okay but you have to you have we have sleeping pods here.

42:05Yeah. But you have to tell everybody that you do so that they don't think you are slacking, right? Yeah. I think I'll do that. Because it's not really slacking. It's getting more energy for the evening and afternoon. Yeah. This cat nap is so important. Where do you go? When do you go to bed? Too late. Don't ask. Too late. And that's my resolution is to start going to bed a bit earlier. Yeah. But on the other hand, why do you want to change? I mean, it's not like you're doing badly. so why are you sure we should have are you sure you should have resolutions to change your life when you are doing well only because i want to work out you know i want to get up earlier and do do a workout all right what's your morning what's your morning ritual i do actually do a small workout um and then i come to work and you know i read the papers i come to work um and then it's bang bang bang what are your charging stations where do you where do you relax i run so sometimes I run by the bay you can see the bay sometimes I run at home or if I visit a new place or I visit I like to run when I can or if I have little pockets like last night between end of work and going to to a dinner I had a quick run as well I run I swim I do yoga and whilst I'm doing that whilst I'm running I listen to podcasts I love you know listening to Kathy Woods or to you know Peter Diamontis Singularity Salim Ismael so it's just that that's my kind of when I'm relaxing I'm also learning absorbing information and learning new stuff well I also know another podcast you can listen to going forward if you want to and I'm going to add Nikolai Tangent to that running list Tushan it's been tremendous talking to you what a pleasure and you are very impressive and it's been great Thank you so much.

43:56Thank you.

44:02So, Nikolai, now that you've interviewed me, I feel that I can't waste this huge opportunity to reverse interview you. So thank you for agreeing, even though it's so last minute. Fantastic. Love it. So how does it feel to be the manager of the world's top and number one sovereign wealth fund? It has a huge responsibility. It's a huge responsibility, of course, but I don't think much about it, to be honest. Oh, you don't? No. It's an honour to kind of manage the capital for the country because the fund is very important in a Norwegian context. But I have so many great colleagues who helped me do this, and so I don't feel that I'm particularly important.

44:46But how do you set the tone for the fund and for your colleagues? What is the role of a CEO in a sovereign wealth fund? Okay, the role of a CEO. CEO stands for Chief Energy Officer. Oh, energy. Yeah. I like that. So I think it is to give energy. It is to give direction. It is to give, you know, impulses. It's to transmit learning. I'm sorry? Inspiration? Yeah, totally. It's to inspire. And it is to make people go somewhere they may not, don't want to go initially. And so it is to motivate them, give them responsibility and make sure it's fun. Yeah. Have you had to take your team somewhere that maybe was challenging and they didn't want to go?

45:33Totally. How did you do that? How did you motivate a whole team to go down a path that they were reluctant to go down? Well, I think you have to explain why they should go in that direction and why it makes sense. For instance, we are a much more open organization than we were in the past. We are the most transparent fund in the world. And in the beginning, I thought, you know, that's good because then other people can see what we do. But I think transparency and openness is so important because it makes us absorb impulses from the world and technology from the outside in a much better way. So one thing is the openness.

46:04The second thing is the whole, you know, level of ambitions. I think if when you tell people about your ambitions, if they don't start laughing, they are not high enough. They don't start laughing. They must laugh. When you tell them what your ambitions are. Ha ha ha laugh. Ha ha, laugh. Okay, so tell me what you said and then everyone laughed. Well, in the beginning I said, listen, we want to be the number one large investment fund in the world. And everyone laughed. Yeah, because it was just such a... At the time, what size were you? This is five years ago. Now people don't laugh. So I think that's important.

46:42And... I like that. So your ambition has to... So it's an ambition. And then it's with performance, which is important. You know, how you define performance, how you get there, how you work with methodology and process, and then speed, you know, to make sure there's a high speed. Speed is a mindset, and you need to... Speed is a mindset. You really need to drive it all the time, you know. Yeah, yeah. So chief energy officer giving inspiration, giving speed. Then what drives you? How do you have so much energy? you do this huge day job then you have this fantastic podcast you're famous well i mean so the podcast is part of the transparency we do and we learn a lot from the podcast which we are taking into the organization and to share all that information with the norwegian people and people who are interested across the world i think it's a big plus right so you know our applications are going through the roof we have a lot of very clever people who want to work with us and so on so i think that that makes a lot of sense but energy where does it come from you know what it's interesting there's very little research that has got into where energy comes from but it's probably a combination of us want to show the world i mean you want to show the world i want to show the world yeah we want to do the we want to be the best we can yeah we want to do something great yeah but earlier you shared with me that you take this cat nap from 2 30 to 3 which i think is fantastic i want to say that also in my reverse podcast um because you're right i mean you have ups and tides, you know, you have ebbs and flows of energy and sometimes in the day after lunch, for example, it's going to be low and you take that quick catnap, it just propels you forward, right?

48:22It gives you that more energy for the second half of the day. And what inspires you? It inspires me to meet people like you, to meet leaders across the world. I read a lot of books, i read a lot what are you reading these days well i'm on the i'm on the jury of the financial times business book of the year oh wow and so i got 16 books not too long ago so i'm reading those 16 books and actually tonight we have a meeting in the jury oh wow to take the 16 down to six okay do i have a sneak peek or which ones you like it's okay because by the time i i there are some some incredible books. I do read a lot of those type of books, but I try to read very widely because I think that's part of being open-minded.

49:09To learn from science, to learn from psychology, to learn from sport, from art. I think that's how you become more innovative and more creative. Yeah. So changing time, let's talk about the markets. Where do you think we're headed now? I think it's incredibly difficult to know because, you know last weekend i was up in the mountains with seven of my cleverest friends and we do these once a year and we record what do we think about various parameters for the next 12 months so as you climb the mountain you record everyone we were we were listening to the uh to the recording from last year okay and we were 80 percent wrong wow 80 percent wrong because none of us predicted the tariffs.

49:55Yes, of course. The situation between the US and Europe. The fact that India is now closer to China. You know, you just, you name it. And we didn't predict any of these things. Now, had we predicted all these things, we would have thought that stock markets would have been down 20, 30 percent. And it's up there. And you would have got it wrong, right? Totally wrong. You get it wrong and wrong. Yeah. And so I think what it's all about now is you cannot predict anything. Yeah. You need to make sure the organization is extremely agile. Yeah. That it is robust in all different types of ways and robust, I mean, robust from a cyber point of view, from a balance sheet point of view, to have redundancy in various places.

50:32And then I think it's to work on speed. So to me, these three things. Agility, speed and resiliency. Now, that sounds like what we're going for as well. It is so important to be resilient in this day and age, but also to have the agility and the speed to just take on new stuff. right? And to pivot when you need to. And so how do you see the geopolitics? I mean, you invest in Asia, don't you? And you're now visiting Asia. Do you come to Asia every year? Yeah. Okay. When you come every year as someone from the West, what surprises you about Asia? and what maybe worries you about Asia? Well, it's very impressive.

51:23Innovation is very impressive. Work ethic is very impressive. The way you navigate the geopolitics these days is very, very impressive. I mean, you talk about the bank wanting to be the safe haven. In a way, this is kind of the safe haven compared to a lot of other places. So I think you're well positioned and I think you're making the most of it. Yeah, yeah. What do you think a bank like DBS can do more of to be better? Well, I think my impression is that you're doing a lot of the right things. Of course, the big thing now is the AI and to which extent that could dislocate the banking landscape.

52:01You have a new entrance. You need to be on top of your data stack and the data quality relentlessly focus on customer satisfaction, which you are. Do you worry about the weaponization of data and also the weaponization of technology? I mean, we're seeing the weaponization of everything, right, from payments to trade to supply chain to chips. And increasingly, the East and West tech stack is kind of bifurcating, if you will.

52:36We're trying to diversify and make sure that they're both interoperable. but how are you seeing this whole tank bifurcation in your world? Oh, it's extremely interesting and I kind of think it started to be serious, let's say, five years ago and technology is now embedded in weapons, so in the power struggle, pharmaceutical research, self-driving cars, battery technologies, technology is embedded everywhere and you are, in a way, as you said, the world is a bit splitting in two areas and it is a clear negative. Yeah, you can't optimize on costs anymore, right? You're going to have, you know, you have to have just in case, not just in time.

53:25Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess, you know, that brings us to also the way one invests in this sort of, you know, because you're global, right? You invest globally. How do you think about allocating assets? Do you look at companies more above countries and above currencies? I think you have to be very diversified and very long-term. Very long-term, which is how long? Well, we are 50, 200 years. Wow. At least we try to be, but it's difficult. One of the toughest things in life is to be long-term. Long-term. Because you come into the office on Monday and it's just like you don't do anything.

54:08Tuesday, you don't do anything. Wednesday, you don't do anything. You come home to your husband or wife and say, hey, what did you do today, Sushant? No, I did nothing. And five days in a row, you don't do anything. So that's kind of the ability to sit still is very, very hard. It's very hard. Yeah. Wow. I never thought of it that way. It is so interesting. But that means when you move, you really have to do your work before you move. Yeah, no, we are helped because we have a mandate from the Ministry of Finance, which tells us in broad terms how we should be invested. So we don't need to make these large asset education decisions ourselves.

54:48We are really helped by anchoring in the parliament and a good process behind this. So tell us about what Singapore and Singapore can learn from, what ten Asians and Singaporeans learn from Norway. Well, I think that's a very tough one because I don't do politics. And so I look at Singapore and I admire the long-term thinking, the planning, the upscaling. Well, Norway has long-term planning. Norway is very green, very sustainable. No, no, we have a lot of great things in Norway, right? We have a lot of great things. I think it's... You all speak great English for a start. Why is that? Well, because we are a very small nation and we...

55:32That's like us. So we all had to learn English. Yeah, sure, of course. Absolutely. You are what? Finally, you are? We're five. We are five. We are also five. We're also five. We have a bit more space in Norway. We have a lot more space. So it's easier to get up in the mountains or in the forest than be on your own, you know. More places to meditate. But no, I think Singapore and Norway, they are two great places. Yes. Very good education system, right? Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. I think that's the bedrock is, you know, being open. being open-minded and being international, but also embracing learning and staying relevant.

56:15Absolutely. Totally agree. Well, it's been a great pleasure. Thank you for allowing me to interview you. My pleasure. And I look forward to the next time we meet. Absolutely. Likewise. Thank you so much.