We’re seated in the cavernous Marina Bay ballroom, and this middle aged, portly man strides up confidently to the mic. He says he wants to report an ‘ethical issue’. When he went to the branch, this relationship manager asked him if he was happy with his wife.
I raise my eyebrows. He carries on.
I put $1m with HSBC. Another 500k with Citibank.
With OCBC? Nothing.
Why? Because your relationship managers have ethical problems. Can you imagine? She’s asking me “how’s your relationship with your wife? I’m not very happy with my boyfriend.” Is she trying to ask me to be her sugar daddy?
Well, Chairman Andrew Lee is in for a long afternoon.
Another elderly gent has made his slow way to the microphone. He talks about the dividend being ‘chicken shit’ in the past, and proceeds to thank the Board for raising the dividend over the years.
Later, Chairman Andrew Lee corrects him, saying,
The dividend is definitely not ‘chicken shit’.
Sitting there, I wondered how OCBC had managed to move its dividend so much higher in recent years. Andrew Lee had prepared a speech about what they’d been doing in recent years.
One of the first things he shared was not what they had done, but what they had not. When there were talks about the OCBC Building being renovated, they had held off the development, holding off the $6b it would have cost to manage the surrounding complex. They had not done crazy, new acquisitions, but had instead taken time to re-acquire what was in the Group, such as by trying to retake Great Eastern private.
Whilst they had failed, they had now consolidated a larger portion of the shares of GE, allowing them to book more of the profits from GE.
But there were concerns about where the new growth would come from. Which was where I heard the first big insight of the day. Some had asked Andrew whether they were worried about Indonesia’s flagging economy.
You can’t ignore Indonesia.
Indonesia is the largest economy in ASEAN, accounting for nearly half of ASEAN’s GDP.
I never expected this. All I knew was that Indonesia was cheaper. Running my agency with Indonesian designers, was a quarter of what I’d pay Singaporeans. They would cost me SG$800 a month, whereas the minimum I would have to pay Singaporeans was $3200. No questions asked. Whether that be an annual report design or otherwise.
But I should have known. On 2nd May, I’d been over in Indonesia, launching the book of a Japanese author I’d worked with. There, spread out over a huge mall in Malaysia, lay a big children’s book fair which brought children along. And that evening, as I sat there and heard 4 year olds ask questions of the Japanese author, I was surprised at just how articulate the Indonesian children were. Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t look down on them.
But I’d not expected British accented English, in Jakarta’s suburban mall.
And working with the Indonesian designers in my team, I’ve just been surprised at there being nearly zero difference with the Singaporeans I work with. In fact, if anything, they work harder, smarter, and much better than Singaporeans.
But was OCBC being foolish, especially with the regime change in recent times? At CEO Tan Teck Long’s Q1’26 call, Chanya of Bloomberg asked about the concerns in Indonesia and why they still did the HSBC acquisition for $400m.
CEO Tan shared about how the acquisition had a small loan book of 0.3b, but a bigger AUM of $6.6b and 336,000 customers. This was no small number.
Tan convincing the Board to do the acquisition
But what was interesting to me was how Tan had convinced the board to do this. I’d heard from Bank of Singapore staff about how conservative the Board was, and how they’d not done any major acquisitions for years. In fact, at the AGM in April 2026, Andrew Lee had pointed out that in these choppy waters, they saw themselves as a ship cutting through the waters, and did not want to take on more load than what was needed.
They thus had not taken on absurd acquisitions, nor had they done crazy Capex to their building renovations, and most importantly they continued to be extremely light in their pace of capital returns.
But more importantly, what I did see was Mrs Tan Ching Yee, newly appointed non-executive director. I first met her when the Institute of Policy Studies organised a discussion on the role of Singapore’s reserves, and realised that this small woman was the Permanent Secretary of Finance, and effectively holding the levers to trillions of dollars.She has gained a level of understanding of Singapore’s finance system, and would be a big addition to OCBC.
Happy Friday… dividends?
In the quarterly earnings call, CFO Goh Chin Yee shared that for the share buybacks, they’d only completed 20% of the buybacks. And they had 80% of the 1b they had not done. They were open to doing a special dividend to reward their long-term shareholders.
Divide that by the number of OCBC shares, and that would give you a $0.175 special dividend.
Insurance could be THE unlikely driver
But of course, not everyone loves OCBC. Amongst the 3 local banks, OCBC is often seen as the smallest ‘banking’ segment because they do so many other things. After then MAS Chairman Lee Hsien Loong’s directive for anti-commingling of financial and non-financial businesses for banks, DBS and UOB focused on distribution of insurance only.
But OCBC chose a different route. They chose to not just do distribution, but to continue owning the ‘factory’ where these policies were made. And today, Great Eastern is an undisputed leader in the insurance market, gaining from the entire aging population of Singapore.
We all know how Warren Buffett loved insurers because of how they gave float for the Group to invest in higher yielding products. And here, we’re slowly seeing how this float is allowing them to invest in other things.
Like human capital.
Don’t ignore the organizational development aspect of OCBC
Over the last 3 years, I’ve been working with an organizational development guru called Tong Yee. When you go to his lessons, people cry. Share things they don’t even share with their best friends. Feel so moved that they call the mother they have not spoken to for years.
And Tong Yee consults for them regularly. Which is why I know that in a potentially toxic culture like a bank, they are bound to do much, much better.
Don’t discount OCBC.
They are not chicken shit.