The programme elevates the rigour of wealth advisory skills training with scalable, consistent, and realistic AI-driven coaching

L- R: Mr Jared Yong, Deputy Cluster Manager, Ms Ng Zuolin, wealth advisor and Mr Bob Ng, Head of Personal and Premier Banking, Singapore presenting at the media launch of the Gen AI training programme on 15 April 2026.

Singapore, 15 April 2026 – OCBC announced today that it has rolled out a generative AI (Gen AI)-powered skills training programme for its 900-strong wealth advisor force in Singapore. Supporting the Group’s ‘whole-of-wealth’ proposition under The Next Frontier strategy, the six-month programme deploys Gen AI to coach wealth advisors on a full range of competencies including investment advisory, client management, product mastery and wealth planning.

Previous wealth advisory skills training was conducted solely in-person, on a one-on-one basis, and dependent on a supervisor’s availability. Wealth advisors can take up to three weeks to secure a training session with their supervisors who typically have to coach up to 10 staff. This is in addition to having other responsibilities, resulting in inconsistent evaluation standards and feedback quality across different supervisors.

The use of Gen AI removes bias and emotions that can influence supervisor-led coaching. This ensures all wealth advisors are trained in responsible advisory and regulatory conduct consistently and at a high professional standard – at scale.

A first-of-its-kind by a bank in Singapore, the Gen AI-powered programme was developed over 12 months using large language models guided by OCBC’s anonymised proprietary insights on customer behaviours to generate realistic training scenarios. These include helping a customer to create an investment portfolio to address their long-term needs, identifying a customer’s risk profile, selling more sophisticated financial products or adjusting investment strategies in line with market movements. During each training session, the programme – available to wealth advisors on their work devices – dynamically adapts its responses based on what is said, engaging naturally as a customer would in a real-life setting.

Following each session, supervisors are provided with a Gen AI-generated gap-analysis report that details the wealth advisor’s level of competency and highlights specific areas for improvement. This gives supervisors clear insights into the skills gaps, enabling them to deliver more targeted, higher-value, and deeper in-person coaching to close the gaps more effectively. This training approach helps wealth advisors build confidence and acquire skills faster: they have the comfort and flexibility to practice wealth advisory skills with the Gen AI programme multiple times at their own time, without the constraints of supervisor availability.

The programme has delivered positive results since its implementation. Within the first three months of training, wealth advisors demonstrated a high level of customer engagement, securing double the number of weekly client appointments compared with peers who had not yet undergone the programme. They also recorded a 50 per cent uplift in revenue compared with the three months prior. The wealth advisors cited the realism of the scenarios and the consistent, best practice-aligned evaluation and feedback framework of the programme as key contributors to their performance improvement.

The programme will be rolled out in Malaysia and Hong Kong at a later stage, with training content localised to the specific needs of wealth advisors in each market. Customer scenarios, assessments and learning pathways will be customised to reflect local products, regulatory requirements and customer behaviours.

OCBC’s wealth advisors serve three segments of retail banking customers – personal banking (assets under management of under S$350,000), OCBC Premier Banking (assets under management of S$350,000 to S$1.5 million) and OCBC Private Premier Client (assets under management of at least S$1.5 million).

Mr Sunny Quek, OCBC’s Head of Global Consumer Financial Services, said: “We now have a powerful programme for our wealth advisors to help them quickly grasp the skills relevant to build confidence and a strong grasp of product knowledge and financial industry regulations. The right customers must be sold the right products at the right time. Driving the Tech Shift in our corporate strategy, a Gen AI-powered programme like this reinforces our commitment to utilising AI, digital and data capabilities to deliver customer-centric experiences.

“In wealth management, these experiences are especially crucial because advisory requires empathy, judgment, and trust – qualities that only human advisors can bring. By marrying AI precision with the human touch, we ensure our advisors are not just well-trained, but future-ready for customers’ growing sophistication in their wealth management needs. We are enabling consistent, high-quality engagement across all our customer segments, while embedding AI into our core processes, including employee development.”

Reflecting on her experience with the Gen AI training programme, Ms Ng Zuolin, an OCBC wealth advisor, said: “When I first entered the banking industry, it was daunting to build both my product knowledge and client management skills. Having more opportunities to practice is helpful. With the Gen AI training programme, I can practice the scenarios on my own, and as many times as possible to pick up wealth advisory skills more quickly to serve customers better. This has boosted my confidence when engaging customers. Plus, with the feedback from the Gen AI training, my supervisor can identify my weaknesses and help me tackle them faster during our in-person training sessions.”