DBS chief executive officer Tan Su Shan received S$9.6 million in total compensation for the 12 months ended Dec 31, 2025, covering both her first nine months at the helm and the period she served as deputy CEO earlier in the year.
Tan's remuneration comprised S$975,250 in salary, a S$3.7 million cash bonus, S$4.9 million in deferred compensation and S$68,694 in non-cash components, including club, car and driver benefits, DBS' annual report released on Monday (Mar 9) indicated.
The figure excludes a retention award of S$737,250, which the bank said serves as a retention tool and compensates employees for the time value of deferred compensation.
The S$9.6 million figure compares with the S$17.6 million pay package former CEO Piyush Gupta received for FY2024, his final full year in the role, before Tan took over in March 2025.
For FY2025, Gupta received S$4.2 million in compensation for the period he served as CEO from Jan 1 to Mar 28, 2025. This comprised S$369,048 in salary, a S$1.8 million cash bonus, S$2 million in deferred compensation and S$42,297 in non-cash components.
Tan succeeded Gupta on Mar 28, 2025.
"Under her leadership, the bank continued to deliver a solid financial performance," DBS said. "This was despite the challenging operating environment marked by macroeconomic uncertainty and rate headwinds."
On Feb 9, DBS reported a three per cent fall in full-year net profit to S$10.9 billion for FY2025, due mainly to the implementation of the global minimum tax in Singapore.
Total income and profit before tax nevertheless rose to record highs of S$22.9 billion and S$13.1 billion, respectively.
Return on equity stood at 16.2 per cent - down from 18 per cent in FY2024 - but within the bank's 15 to 17 per cent medium-term target range and several percentage points above local and global peers, DBS noted.
The lender's market capitalisation crossed US$100 billion in June 2025 and stood at US$124 billion at the end of the year, placing it among the top 25 banks globally by market capitalisation, it added.
On an aggregate basis, DBS' senior management received S$83.1 million in total compensation, including Tan's package. The median increase in total compensation for senior management who were members of the Group Management Committee in both 2024 and 2025 was 9.5 per cent.
The lender does not disclose the salaries of its top five key executives, apart from the CEO, for competitive reasons.
Looking ahead, Tan and DBS chairman Peter Seah said in a joint letter that while an "increasingly bifurcated world" presents complexities, it is also creating "structural growth opportunities".
"These include rising intra-Asia and Asia-Gulf Cooperation Council trade and investment flows, internationalisation of the renminbi, as well as wealth opportunities for our core markets as retail and institutional investors look to diversify from the concentration of US dollar assets," they wrote.
Against these "megatrends", the lender's longstanding focus on high-return structural growth areas - wealth management, transaction banking, treasury customer sales and its coverage of global financial institutions - "remains unchanged".
"If anything, we are doubling down on them," the duo added.
Shares of DBS ended trading 1.3 per cent lower at S$54.31 on Monday.
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