The story
Founded by Lee Kong Chian in 1932.1
Founding and early years
On 31 October 1932, three banks – Chinese Commercial Bank (1912), Ho Hong Bank (1917), and Oversea Chinese Bank (1919) – merged and consolidated their strengths to form Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation under the leadership of Hoklos Tan Ean Kiam (co-founder and managing director of Oversea Chinese Bank) and Lee Kong Chian (vice-chairman of Chinese Commercial Bank). Lee played a central role in leading the amalgamation and is known today as the "founding father" of OCBC Bank. Lee served on the OCBC board as vice-chairman from 1932, and assumed chairmanship of OCBC in 1938, holding this post until just before his death in 1967.
When OCBC began operation in February 1933, it was already one of the strongest local banks in the Straits Settlements.
In 1942 during World War II, all the local banks in Singapore closed briefly during the early days of the Japanese Occupation. By April 1942 most banks, including OCBC, had resumed normal operations. In Indonesia, the Japanese occupation authorities closed OCBC's branches in Sumatra. During the war, the bank moved its head office to Bombay, India and only re-registered back in Singapore after the war ended. OCBC's branch in Xiamen survived the war and in the 1950s, OCBC was one of only four foreign banks to have branches in China.
Post-war expansion and operations
After the war, OCBC re-established its branches in Jambi, Jakarta, and Surabaya. However, the 1963 conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia (which then included Singapore) resulted in the closure of OCBC's branches there. That same year the revolutionary government in Burma nationalized OCBC's two branches there, which became People's Bank No. 14.
The bank was criticized for not expanding fast enough to meet the needs of the post-war Chinese business community, especially in the smaller towns of Malaya. One of the critics was Tan Sri Khoo Teck Puat (then deputy general manager) who resigned in 1959 after failing to be appointed to the bank’s board of directors, and subsequently set up Malayan Banking in Kuala Lumpur in 1960 with 80 former OCBC staff.
Growth in Singapore
By 1970, OCBC's total assets exceeded S$1 billion, making OCBC the largest financial institution with the biggest deposit base in Singapore. By the end of 1981, OCBC’s total assets had grown to over S$7 billion.
In December 1972, OCBC acquired Four Seas Communications Bank, the oldest surviving Chinese bank in Singapore. The bank had been founded in 1906 as the Sze Hai Tong Bank and its founders had targeted the Teochew community. In 1976, the landmark OCBC Centre, designed by renowned American architect I. M. Pei, was completed and serves as OCBC's current headquarters. On 9 May 1989, OCBC took on a new corporate identity by changing its logo and its name to OCBC Bank.
Overseas expansion
The next major acquisition occurred in August 2001, when OCBC acquired Keppel Capital Holdings and all its subsidiaries, including Keppel TatLee Bank, Keppel Securities, and Keppel TatLee Finance. By February 2002, both OCBC and Keppel TatLee banks were operationally and legally integrated.
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On 25 June 2004, OCBC Bank established a wholly owned subsidiary e2 Power Pte Ltd to provide back-office operations and technology support and transaction processing services in Singapore. A similar operating company, e2 Power Sdn Bhd was also set up on 21 July 2004 in Malaysia.
On 3 June 2005, OCBC saw the grand opening ceremony of its newly constructed Malaysia headquarters and main branch (Menara OCBC building) in Kuala Lumpur, officiated by then-Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and in July the same year, OCBC opened an off-shore branch in Brunei.
Modern innovations
On 11 May 2017, OCBC entered into an agreement to acquire National Australia Bank’s private wealth business in Singapore and Hong Kong. The acquisition was completed in November 2017. The deposits and mortgages booked in Hong Kong was transferred to OCBC Bank (Hong Kong) while those booked in Singapore was transferred to OCBC Bank.
In March 2020, OCBC announced its partnership with Xero, a New Zealand-based cloud accounting software, to help small and medium-sized enterprise customers digitise their operations. In July 2020, OCBC launched HealthPass, a healthcare mobile application that aims to connect patients with medical doctors in Singapore via online consultation.
On 3 September 2024, OCBC announced that it would soon allow children aged 7 to 15 (which it described as "Generation Alpha") to have their own bank account, operate their bank account digitally, and to have their own debit card. It stated that this OCBC MyOwn Account would be registered solely in the name of the child, but would only be operable "within boundaries and controls set by parents". The service would be launched less than a month later on 20 October 2024.
From Wikipedia’s article on OCBC Bank, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5