UOB's Wee Ee Cheong puts people and trust at the heart of AI banking plans

A 32,000 employee workforce at the center of change

UOB is pairing its push into artificial intelligence with training for its 32,000 employees, a programme to move up to 500 staff into new roles and a three year partnership with Accenture. The bank's deputy chairman and chief executive, Wee Ee Cheong, says the purpose is to help people work faster and make better decisions while keeping human judgment at the heart of banking.

Speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025 at Singapore Expo on November 12, Wee set out a strategy that connects faster services and more personalized advice with a familiar banking requirement: customers must be able to trust the institution handling their money. Empathy, ethics and responsibility, he said, remain human strengths as machines take on more work.

Wee described AI as a way to give customers tailored insights and access to services around the clock, while helping banks identify risks earlier and manage them before they grow. He also pointed to tokenization and near instant settlement as tools that could connect ASEAN markets more closely with global investment and trade.

UOB's workforce plans give that message a practical shape. An internal academy and a memorandum of understanding with Workforce Singapore, the Institute of Banking and Finance and Ngee Ann Polytechnic aim to build foundational skills in generative AI and automation. Programmes for existing employees and university graduates provide routes into different jobs and specialist AI and data roles.

The bank's approach brings together three tasks: introducing new technology, preparing people to use it and protecting the reliability of financial services. UOB intends those tasks to move together as AI becomes part of everyday work across its businesses.

Where Wee draws the line between people and machines

Wee said machines can process vast amounts of data and operate at speed. Human advisers and leaders contribute judgment, empathy and ethics, qualities that matter when a financial decision affects a customer's livelihood or a business relationship.

Explaining how he believes AI should support employees, the UOB chief executive said:

AI should help people do more and work faster, rather than displacing them and their jobs.

Wee also described leadership and the handover of responsibilities to the next generation as human decisions. Introducing his view of succession and stewardship, he said:

The baton is passed to people, not machines.

Trust, in his account, develops over years through fair decisions, careful risk management and good service. Technology can help a bank deliver those things more efficiently, while people remain responsible for the choices the institution makes.

UOB's culture was shaped by Wee's late father, Wee Cho Yaw, who led the bank for decades. He was known for disciplined growth, community service and a focus on relationships that lasted. The current effort to digitize services and expand AI skills sits within that tradition, with the stated aim of strengthening the human touch associated with the bank.

What the Accenture partnership will cover

UOB's collaboration with Accenture will run for three years and apply advanced AI across the bank. Its scope includes automating internal processes, improving models used to assess credit and fraud risks, and delivering more personalized customer interactions across ASEAN.

Accenture will provide consulting support and technology assets, including its AI Refinery platform. UOB employees will also receive access to training through Accenture's LearnVantage services. The collaboration therefore combines changes to banking systems with opportunities for staff to build the skills needed to use them.

Julie Sweet, Accenture's chair and chief executive, described the partnership as a way to expand AI use while developing employees' capabilities. She said:

This partnership will help UOB realize its vision for the future of banking by scaling generative and agentic AI, and by helping their people develop valuable advanced technology skills.

LearnVantage's training library will allow staff to build familiarity with data and AI as the technology develops. UOB's wider approach is to keep learning continuous, so employees can adapt alongside the tools being introduced.

How generative and agentic AI could change daily work

Generative AI can draft content, summarize lengthy documents, identify patterns in behaviour and prepare data for analysis. In banking, those capabilities can save time on routine checks, help teams develop products more quickly and give relationship managers tailored information before customer meetings.

An employee reviewing a long file, for example, could use an AI summary to prepare for the next stage of work. The value comes from reducing time spent gathering and organizing information, leaving more time for the judgment or conversation that follows.

Agentic AI goes further by breaking a goal into steps, using tools to carry out tasks and checking results against rules. Such systems can act through application programming interfaces, the connections that allow software systems to exchange information or instructions. In a bank, their activity would need clear limits, policy controls and records of what they did.

Possible tasks include preparing a loan application file, scheduling a payment or checking a portfolio against preset risk alerts before asking a person to approve the next step. An agent could also scan transaction data overnight for unusual activity, draft a fraud alert with supporting details, enter the case into a workflow system and notify a human analyst for review.

A small business loan renewal provides another example. An agent might retrieve financial information, update cash flow estimates and propose credit terms within the bank's policies. Clear scope, human approval at the right stages, audit trails and stress testing would help keep the process controlled and predictable under real conditions.

The difference matters for employees and customers. Generative AI can help prepare information; agentic AI can carry a task through several stages. As a system takes on more actions, the bank needs to specify what it may do, when it must stop and which decisions require a person.

Helping existing employees move into growing roles

UOB's internal academy is intended to give its 32,000 employees a baseline understanding of generative AI and automation. The agreement with Workforce Singapore, the Institute of Banking and Finance and Ngee Ann Polytechnic supports foundational courses on how the technology works, where it is useful and how to use it responsibly.

The plan reflects the bank's expectation that AI will become part of daily tasks across many roles, from branch operations to technology and product teams. Broad training gives employees a common starting point, while more focused programmes prepare some staff for different responsibilities.

Better U Pivot is the clearest example of that shift. Up to 500 employees in operations and administrative roles are being selected over two years to move into areas with growing demand, including risk and compliance, sales and customer experience.

Participants follow a curriculum lasting 12 months, combining training on the job, external courses and intensive mentorship from hiring managers and coaches. UOB selects employees whose current roles may be affected by automation and gives them a structured route into roles with prospects for continued growth.

A pilot that began in 2021 saw employees successfully move into new positions, including work as anti financial crime operations analysts. Those roles involve the work of identifying and responding to financial crime risks, connecting the bank's need for stronger controls with new opportunities for staff.

A paid route into AI and data careers

UOB has also launched an Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics Centre of Excellence with the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the National University of Singapore. The programme lasts two years and plans to take in 100 university graduates over three years.

Participants join UOB in paid, full time roles. During the first year, they work on business projects while receiving training and mentorship from senior data practitioners. In the second year, they move into specialized tracks within business units.

Graduates receive certifiable AI skills and a university credential that can count toward advanced study. The structure connects academic learning with work inside the bank, then gives participants a route toward a more specialized role.

Singapore's Manpower Minister Tan See Leng put the workforce challenge in plain terms when speaking at UOB's employee festival. Describing the need to prepare employees as businesses change, he said:

Business transformation must go hand in hand with workforce transformation.

UOB's initiatives reach different groups: foundational training covers the wider workforce, Better U Pivot supports employees moving out of roles affected by automation, and the graduate programme develops specialist AI and data skills. New pathways for people changing careers also form part of the bank's effort to bring staff into AI and data work.

Why faster settlement matters for ASEAN businesses

Wee's festival remarks extended beyond AI to tokenization and near instant settlement. Tokenization uses distributed ledgers, shared digital records, to represent ownership of assets. It can make it possible to own smaller portions of an asset and to build workflows in which agreed steps happen automatically.

Settlement is the final completion of a trade, when money and assets reach their intended owners. Reducing the time between a trade and that completion can lower counterparty risk, the risk that the other party fails to meet its obligation, and release capital sooner.

For businesses trading across ASEAN and beyond, shorter settlement times and intelligent workflows could improve cash flow and reduce delays. Money arriving sooner can make the next payment or purchase easier to manage.

The vision Wee outlined is a more connected region: a business in Jakarta could sell to a buyer in Bangkok and settle almost immediately, with compliance checks and risk screening taking place as the transaction proceeds. Tokenization and faster settlement would help link regional markets more tightly with global capital and commerce.

Achieving that scale requires systems that can work together. Wee called for clearer common rules, technical compatibility and industry cooperation so banks and financial technology firms can expand AI and blockchain services while maintaining confidence.

Security and trust remain conditions for growth

Wee said reliability, data protection and resilience cannot be compromised as banking systems become more connected. Faster services and more personalized interactions must be supported by systems that remain dependable and protect customer information.

Banks will still need to explain their models, test for bias and track the origin of data and outputs. Bias testing checks whether a system produces unfair results for particular groups. Tracking where information comes from helps a bank review how an output or decision was produced.

Human review is also needed where decisions affect customers. These responsibilities align with Singapore's continuing work on practical guardrails for AI in finance, stronger model governance and protection for data moving across borders.

Trusted digital identities and secure data networks are another part of Wee's priorities. Reliable identity checks help establish who is using a service, while secure networks protect information as institutions exchange it. Industry collaboration on both would support more connected services.

Singapore has already invested in secure identity and payment infrastructure, and industry groups continue to strengthen protection against scams. Safeguards include face verification for actions carrying higher risks and timed cognitive breaks during transactions, pauses that give customers a chance to reconsider what they are doing.

Industry efforts helped prevent more than S$74 million in potential scam losses in 2024. As banks introduce experiences supported by AI and connect more systems across markets, the need for vigilance grows alongside the ability to move money and information faster.

What customers could see, and how the plans fit together

UOB operates across 19 markets and serves millions of consumers and businesses in ASEAN. If its strategy develops as described, customers should see quicker responses, more proactive advice and easier payments and investment transactions across borders.

A relationship manager in Kuala Lumpur could use analytics to identify a customer's approaching cash flow strain and suggest steps before the problem worsens. A retailer expanding from Singapore into Vietnam could open accounts, receive payments in local currencies and pool funds with fewer delays.

Individual customers could receive answers from digital assistants at any hour, with complex cases passed to people. UOB's expansion into digital services in recent years, including an experience delivered only through mobile channels and aimed at younger customers, already combines its relationship banking approach with new ways to access services.

The AI roadmap continues that direction. UOB says technology should raise productivity while protecting security, reliability and ethics. Across a region with many languages, regulations and levels of development, the combination of speed, safety and personal service will shape whether those changes make finance more inclusive.

The main milestones and programme schedules are:

• 2021: A Better U Pivot pilot began, with employees subsequently moving into roles including anti financial crime operations analysts.
• 2024: Industry measures helped prevent more than S$74 million in potential scam losses.
• November 12, 2025: Wee outlined UOB's approach to AI at the Singapore FinTech Festival at Singapore Expo.
• Over two years: Better U Pivot aims to select up to 500 employees, each following a curriculum lasting 12 months.
• Over three years: The AI and Data Analytics Centre of Excellence plans to take in 100 graduates for its programme lasting two years.
• Over three years: UOB and Accenture will work together to apply AI across the bank and develop staff skills.

UOB has set out these programme durations, but no calendar date was given for completing the wider AI rollout. Its stated direction is to pair automation with training and human responsibility, rather than measure progress by technology adoption alone.

Key Points

• UOB chief executive Wee Ee Cheong says AI should help people do more and work faster, while empathy, ethics, judgment and leadership remain human responsibilities.
• An internal academy and an agreement with Workforce Singapore, the Institute of Banking and Finance and Ngee Ann Polytechnic support foundational training for 32,000 employees.
• Better U Pivot will support up to 500 employees moving into roles such as risk, compliance, sales and customer experience.
• A centre launched with the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the National University of Singapore plans to take in 100 graduates over three years.
• The three year Accenture partnership covers generative and agentic AI, banking processes, risk models, customer interactions and staff learning.
• Tokenization and near instant settlement could reduce transaction delays and connect ASEAN markets more closely with global trade and investment.
• Wee called for common rules, compatible systems, secure digital identities and data networks, with reliability and trust central to the bank's plans.