Tan Su Shan, the world’s sixth most powerful businesswoman and DBS Bank’s first female CEO, is leading Southeast Asia’s largest lender deeper into AI. Since taking the helm in March 2025, the 58-year-old banker has moved DBS’ AI ambitions beyond conventional chatbots, embedding generative and agentic AI across nearly every part of its operations. By the end of 2025, staff had created around 26,000 personal AI agents, while the bank was operating more than 2,000 AI models. Speaking to Forbes Asia in an interview published this month, Tan described the shift as transformative, envisioning AI agents conducting financial transactions directly with one another, potentially eliminating the need for banking applications. Employees use an internal platform called DBS-GPT, and Tan handed senior executives T-shirts printed with the slogan: "Talk is cheap, show me your agent." Enterprise AI has been deployed across legal, compliance, institutional banking, marketing and wealth management, with corporate bankers using AI to draft credit memos and wealth management teams shortening customer onboarding. Tan told Channel News Asia on Aug. 6 after DBS reported a record second-quarter net profit and raised its 2026 outlook, that the bank was beginning to see measurable business benefits, including AI generating ideation that generates fees and helping relationship managers produce better client ideas.