DBS deploys AI-driven ‘Alpha’ squads to blend legal, compliance, risk roles

Since last July, squads of “multidisciplinary” professionals have been roaming about the legal and compliance halls of DBS under a programme called Alpha.

Despite the name, these are not military units, but teams comprising legal, compliance and financial crime specialists – part of a broader push to break down silos as regulatory work becomes more complex and intertwined.

In practice, each five-member squad – there are 10 of these, or 50 employees in total under Alpha – takes on elements of one another’s roles.

A lawyer, for instance, may face a multidisciplinary challenge such as a contract negotiation involving sanctions warranties. A compliance officer, meanwhile, may need to assess a legal question on whether a digital asset should be treated as a payment token or something else.

“It’s a very, very active programme to transition people into a multidisciplinary workforce,” Lam Chee Kin, managing director and head of legal and compliance at DBS, told The Business Times in a recent interview.

Early feedback from internal stakeholders working with Alpha employees has been positive, as it reduces the number of staff they need to engage to complete a task, saving time.

Said Lam: “Just think about the fundamental proposition – would stakeholders rather talk to three people, or one? You’d rather talk to one, right?”

But the programme does not stop there.

To scale knowledge accumulation and distribution, Alpha squad members are given access to a legal, compliance and financial crime knowledge base that is read and understood by generative artificial intelligence tools.

This knowledge base is used for tasks ranging from production orders and regulatory inspections to policy positions on data protection. Squad members are also empowered to build and deploy their own agents to complete work more efficiently.

Specific agents already in use include tools that negotiate general terms and conditions with third-party suppliers, and systems that classify corporate customers into anti-money laundering risk categories.

Other AI models and agents are deployed elsewhere across the legal and compliance function, including in real-time fraud detection for anti-scam efforts and in the drafting of suspicious transaction reports.

Alpha is one of nine operating model transformation projects that DBS completed in 2025.

The operating model transformation term was notably used by DBS chief executive officer Tan Su Shan at the lender’s fourth-quarter earnings briefing in February. It refers to AI-related initiatives that, among other things, re-engineer DBS’ operations through improved processes and policies, while upskilling staff where needed.

Alpha can “absolutely” be expanded into other parts of the legal and compliance function, though this will depend on the readiness of individual teams and markets, Lam noted.

Catering for the human

Beyond building multidisciplinary expertise, Alpha is also central to change management efforts – particularly when it comes to the employee value proposition – which Lam said are the “really, really critical” aspect of AI adoption.

“If I do not cater for the future of the human being, I will lose the support of the workforce; I will lose the momentum of all these initiatives, and nobody will want to do them,” he said.

“Why? Because of the completely understandable fear for their jobs.”

Alpha therefore seeks to build a “very engaged workforce” that can harness AI effectively, while giving employees confidence to support optimisation efforts without the “fear of large-scale job disruptions”.

And if there are inevitably job disruptions, it is then up to the bank to help employees through the transition.

“That means: If this function is going to face disruption, then we will give you the new tools, we will help optimise your workload, we will retrain and upskill you, we will deploy you somewhere else,” he added.

Last week, it was reported that the biggest banks on Wall Street cut more than 5,000 jobs in the latest quarter, despite record earnings, though no executives specifically linked the reductions to AI.

In February 2025, DBS said it expected to reduce its contract and temporary workforce by around 4,000 over the next three years through natural attrition, as AI takes on more roles previously performed by humans. Permanent staff were not affected.

Helping employees manage the structural disruption posed by AI – such as changes to how lawyers are trained and assessed – also supports the long-term sustainability of the legal profession, added Lam, who is a lawyer.

He pointed to ongoing efforts by senior members of the judiciary and the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) on workstreams related to the future of the legal profession, including AI, internationalisation and well-being.

For its part, DBS has partnered the Singapore Courts and SAL on the annual Hackathon for a Better World, for which the 2026 edition begins on Apr 27.

The hackathon brings together lawyers, working professionals and tertiary students to develop solutions over two months for three challenges: strengthening cross-border legal capability, integrating AI responsibly, and sustaining a rewarding and resilient legal practice.

Source: The Business Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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