The ability to manage personal finances and navigate digital platforms, especially in today’s digital society, is no longer optional – it’s essential. For persons with disabilities (PWDs), these skills are key to enabling greater independence and access to social and economic opportunities. Yet, based on focus groups held in 2023 by SG Enable, Singapore’s focal agency for disability and inclusion, 80% of PWDs surveyed said that financial and digital literacy are not covered in existing training programmes.
DBSF’s SGD 1 million contribution to the initiative
Co-developing a customised learning roadmap for diverse learning needs (supporting different disability profiles), aligned with the national Enabling Skills and Competencies Framework. This covers a wide range of topics spanning basic financial concepts such as budgeting and money management, to application of these concepts in a digital world through topics such as digital bank and scam awareness.
Enabling learning through a variety of channels to ensure accessibility and convenience for PWDs and their caregivers, e.g. holding workshops where they live and work, availing self-directed learning via e-modules.
Equipping the ecosystem (e.g. caregivers, trainers, special education schools) with the know-how to support and reinforce the PWDs’ learning journeys, including resource guides & course materials
This partnership is the first-of-its-kind, with DBS Foundation being the first corporate to partner the disability sector to upskill PWDs on a national scale.
Strategy
We started by doing a needs analysis to better understand the diverse learning needs of different disability profiles, including those with autism, intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, and sensory disabilities. This enabled us to develop a learning roadmap and resource kits that engage PWDs and their caregivers in a more effective manner. Below is a summary of our plan of action:
Co-development of Curriculum
Jointly developed a customised learning roadmap that identifies content that is suitable across various levels of competencies.
Based on the roadmap, we proceeded to customise and develop resource kits for the delivery of the content. A total of 43 learning modules were developed for persons with intellectual and physical disabilities, as well as their caregivers – these modules were categorised according to 4 levels of competencies: pre-foundational, foundational, intermediate and advanced.
Interactive games and learning journeys were also incorporated to make learning engaging, practical and fun.
Delivery of Curriculum
As of June 2025, 94 training sessions (close to 50,000 training hours) were conducted for 970 PWDs and 270 caregivers – these sessions were conducted via a variety of channels, in partnership with close to 20 Special Education Schools and Social Service Agencies, to ensure accessibility and convenience for our participants. This includes holding workshops and seminars where they live and work, and availing self-directed learning for persons with physical disabilities via e-modules.
To better support caregivers, these sessions were developed around real-life caregiving scenarios, and curated through discussions with caregiver groups – to better reflect the varying levels of readiness and learning needs on the ground.
Employee volunteerism
In addition to providing subject matter expertise in financial and digital literacy skills, DBS employee volunteers are also mobilised to volunteer at sessions to equip PWDs with these skills – as of June 2025, over 850 DBS volunteers have contributed more than 2,000 hours.
Supporting the ecosystem & scaling impact
Beyond upskilling PWDs, we strive to foster a stronger support system for them through developing resource guides, toolkits and course materials for trainers, caregivers, special education schools and others in the ecosystem, to equip them with the know-how to support persons with disabilities on their learning journeys.
What Makes It Unique
This partnership addresses a key gap in the system (i.e. the lack of financial and digital literacy education) by availing quality, customised learning opportunities for PWDs, and ensuring their support networks are also trained to support and reinforce their learning. Being equipped with these skills can make an impact on the PWDs’ independence and quality of life in the long-term.
The development of the curriculum and training resources also benefits the disability community beyond DBSF X SG Enable’s partnership period, as this gives special education schools and training providers the resources and know-how to continue upskilling more PWDs and their caregivers.
Results
As of June 2025, the partnership has collectively reached and impacted the lives of more than 1,200 beneficiaries – on track to meet our target of 7,000 by end 2026.
We conducted surveys with each beneficiary at the end and post six-months of the workshop:
About 83% reported increased knowledge on the topic(s) taught at the workshop
About 79% reported increased confidence to apply the financial knowledge taught after the workshop
Beyond the numbers, stories shared by our beneficiaries also illustrate our impact. For example:
“Grace Orchard School student Daniel (16) is now able to set a budget and stick to it.”
“Mr Teo Wee Peng, an executive director for legal and compliance at DBS Bank, has volunteered for the multiple times under the programme with special needs students. He hopes that the financial literacy sessions give students like Daniel a basic understanding about money and how to manage their funds. He has no illusions that they will remember everything after the lesson. He just hopes that one day, it will all connect. Mr Teo also hopes that the people around them will reinforce what the students have learned so they can apply the knowledge in their daily lives.”
