DBS Bank has launched a fully automated online account opening service for companies in Singapore.

With this service, the time taken to open a corporate account will be significantly reduced from the industry average of about one to two hours currently, to as little as 15 minutes, the bank said in a statement on Monday.

"A company tends to need accounts in various currencies for their trading needs. Corporate accounts usually have more than one signer, and often with different levels of authority," DBS said.

"In addition, different individuals in the company tend to have differing types of access rights to accounts on Internet banking, depending on their role in the company."

Add to this the need for certain key persons in the company to hold corporate debit cards or ATM cards, and the amount of customisation required in opening a corporate account is magnified. Finally, Director Board Resolutions need to be signed to authorise the whole process.

Given all this, DBS said, it is not unusual for the process of opening a corporate account to take about one to two hours at a bank branch or with relationship managers.

With DBS' online opening account capability though, clients can open their accounts online, doing away with unnecessary paperwork.

The bank has also enabled its backend systems to have immediate access to information from the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority's database.

This allows DBS to pre-populate account opening forms on behalf of the customer, saving the corporate client time and also eliminating the need for unnecessary form-filling and data entry work.