Commercial banks such as DBS Bank and traditional exchanges such as the Singapore Exchange have one thing in common: they are setting up and adding digital exchanges and platforms to their existing business lines.

As demand for sustainable products rises, stakeholders including consumers, investors, and regulators are pushing manufacturers, suppliers and lenders to incorporate ESG metrics in evaluating the performance of their supply chains.

Driven by competition and rapid disruption, banks increasingly spend on technology enabled models targeted to improve customer experience and service capability. What are the recent developments and top priorities of banks in 2018?

Losses from cybercrime has increased sharply as ransomware incidents soar, ‘cybercrime as a service’ provides greater access and new threats emerge, forcing banks to implement multilayered and stronger technology enabled IT risk and security frameworks.

North America demonstrated the highest overall strength, followed by Asia Pacific and the Middle East, with all banks in the ranking averaging decline in return on assets from 0.76% to 0.74%, and improved gross non-performing loan ratio from 1.8% to 1.65%