POSB (a subsidiary of DBS Bank) is Singapore’s longest serving local bank. In 2013, POSB embarked on a campaign with our community partners to educate seniors on the fundamentals of basic digital banking, so that the elderly in Singapore can be empowered to bank digitally and not be left behind in the digital wave.
Our corporate partners are Singapore's People’s Association (PA), the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), The Council for Third Age (C3A) and NTUC U-Live. With these partners, we have organised various community events targeted at seniors to provide personalised guidance and education to them on the basic tenents of digital banking.
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Goals:
With the evolving and changing payment landscape, and recognising that Singapore’s ageing population forms a large majority of our customers base, POSB embarked on this initiative to enrich the lives of our senior customers by helping them learn to bank digitally.
POSB is fondly known as the People’s Bank, and we collaborate closely with our community partners to better connect with our cutomers on the ground.
We develop these digital banking workshops for our local seniors with their specific needs in mind. We began with an introduction of banking services e.g. remittance, loans, credit cards etc, going beyond the simple deposit and withdrawal services that most seniors are familiar with. We then begin helping them understand the ease and convenience of using our bank's 24/7 self-service machines. Our training topics for seniors would then progress gradually into digital banking and cashless payments or e-payments.
Our face to face workshops or engagements are structured. A 3 hour workshop conducted by our staff volunteers always incorporates hands-on learning for seniors. Our purpose is to enighten and empower our seniors to embrace digital banking. The workshop also provides opportunities for senior participants to receive one-on-one, personalized attention if required, as they slowly navigate a new world of digital banking through their smartphones.
Between 1 Aug 2019 to 31 Dec 2019, we conducted 6 classroom workshops and were involved in 2 events hosted by our community partners, where visitorship and participation exceeded more than 15,000 seniors.
With the Covid-19 situation this year, we began running virtual workshops with our partner The People's Association (PA). Between 2 Jan 2020 to 31 July 2020, we conducted 6 virtual workshops with approximately 250 seniors. More virtual workshops with other community partners including IMDA, NTUC U Live and C3A together with National Library Board are in the pipeline.
We are collaborating with IMDA for their Seniors Go Digital initiative as well, which officially launched in Jul 2020. POSB helped to train 1,000 IMDA digital ambassadors, who will engage close to 100,000 seniors in our local community by Mar 2021 on the benefits of embracing digitalisation. POSB bank staff will also participate in upcoming workshops organised by IMDA to guide seniors on how to use online and mobile banking platforms safely and efficiently.
