OCBC share price to hit $30?
As the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines! In my last review of OCBC in May 2025, I had predicted that the resistance level to be $17.00 and that the counter should be able to hit $20 if it implements the “One OCBC Strategy” successfully. Year-to-date, OCBC share price has climbed about 19% (at the point of writing) and nearly hit a record of $20. On this account, let’s review the possibility of OCBC share price hitting the next milestone – $30.
Part of the bullish form of OCBC share price in 2025 could be attributed to its strategic moves on its insurance businesses – Hong Kong Life and Great Eastern. On 9 October 2025, OCBC sold its entire stake of 33.33% in Hong Kong Life to Yue Xiu Enterprises (Holdings) for $103 million.
Investors must be heaving a sigh of relief as Hong Kong Life posted a net loss of HK$484.1 million in 2023, narrowing the HK$504.9 million loss recorded in 2022. In cutting losses, OCBC demonstrated sensible risk management in its exposure to China, which is still in a state of protracted economic slump.
And then there is the Great Eastern takeover saga. The privatization of GEH would be a significant, yet a low-hanging fruit for the CEO Helen Wong. As Great Eastern has evolved to become a crown jewel for OCBC, the acquisition is definitely a strategic move. It would also cement OCBC as a leading financial powerhouse. Thus, in privatizing Great Eastern right before her retirement on 31 December 2025, Helen Wong has cemented her legacy.
As 2025 comes to an end, OCBC CEO Helen Wong will walk into the sunset and bids farewell to OCBC. It’s been an impressive ride as she led OCBC share price to historical levels and also privatized Great Eastern – an incredible feat not achieved by her male predecessors (David Connor and Samuel Tsien). When she retired, she will be joining the pantheon of Singapore great bank legends – Piyush Gupta and Wee Cho Yaw.
OCBC share price to sustain explosive form?
OCBC share price stormed to record high!
OCBC share price surged with Great Eastern offer!
OCBC’s swashbuckling exploits in Great Eastern proved to be shrewd as it comes at a time when banks are facing pressure from the interest rate cuts. For the 3rd quarter financial result, OCBC’s net interest margin plunged 34 basis points year-on-year, causing net interest income to drop 9% to $2.23 billion. However, the 38% increase in insurance income from Great Eastern helped to cushion the impact. In the end, net profit for 3rd quarter remained unchanged year-on-year at $1.98 billion, supported by higher non-interest income and lower allowances.
OCBC has also resumed its share buybacks programme. As at 14 October 2025, the cumulative shares bought back amounted to 16.5 million. Notably, the shares buybacks were conducted when OCBC share price were trading at prevailing market prices. Previously, OCBC seldom buy back shares at levels above $13.
The key reason for the changed in the approach for shares buybacks should be largely because the Board has announced on 26 February 2025 a comprehensive approach to return $2.5 billion of capital to shareholders over two years via special dividends and share buybacks. The capital return comprises special dividends amounting to 10% of the Group’s net profit for FY24 and FY25, with the balance via share buybacks over two years. Against this backdrop, I anticipate OCBC share price to remain stable for 2026 even though the operating climate turns uncertain.
Note that this is an opinion article and not meant to be a financial advice. Please do your due diligence or engage financial advisors before investing in the stock market. I am not vested OCBC or Great Eastern shares at the moment. Whether OCBC share price of Great Eastern share price will surge or collapse has no impact on me. Thus, this article is not meant to induce readers to make any form of investment decisions.
OCBC share price next milestone
Looking back, the explosive form of OCBC share price in 2024 was largely attributed to the voluntary unconditional offer (VGO) for Great Eastern Holdings (GEH). Investors of OCBC had reacted positively as the VGO was seen as a major coup for OCBC CEO given that the offer price was below the Embedded Value of GEH.
On the other hand, the privatisation of Great Eastern Holdings will represent a major coup for OCBC. Among the three banks, only OCBC has a dedicated insurance arm in the form of Great Eastern Holdings, which offers a full suite of insurance products that covers life, health and investment. In fact, Great Eastern is the largest asset-based life insurance company in Singapore and Malaysia. This led to Singapore government designating Great Eastern as one of the Big Four Insurance companies deemed as “Domestic Systemically Important Insurers in Singapore”.
Okay fair enough. UOB also has an insurance company, UOI, that is listed in SGX. However, UOI’s principal activities are only underwriting of general insurance business and reinsurance. General insurance covers fire, marine, motor, engineering, general accident and liability business. The scale of business and market capitalization of UOI pales in comparison to Great Eastern. DBS Bank sold off its insurance business, the Insurance Corporation of Singapore (ICS), to the UK’s CGU Insurance, as it was then known. ICS was later renamed Aviva Singapore.
Great Eastern brings strategic advantage to OCBC as the former has 16 million combined customers in Singapore and Malaysia, including those under the government schemes. No banks in Singapore has have access to such huge number of customer account. However, till to date, only 30% of OCBC customers had Great Eastern products. Clearly, there is much room for OCBC to improve in this area, and the Greater China market could possibly lend support given the massive market.
Speaking of Greater China, there is a need for investors to closely monitor this area due to OCBC’s exposure in Hong Kong and China. The Group’s NPL ratio for FY2024 has improved to 0.9% whereas its Greater China’s NPL ratio has declined 1.4%. The decline for the Greater China’s NPL ratio was due to the commercial real estate slump in Hong Kong. To tackle this risk, the Group has set aside $466 million of allowances for 9MFY2025, declined 4% year-on-year.
The narrative for the banks in the coming years should be the US interest rate cuts. The interest rate cuts have already impacted net interest income for OCBC. The market is expecting another two to three cuts in 2026. As such, all eyes will be on how the banks diversify its income to address slowing net interest income. On the flipside, a lower interest rate environment will spur more investment and hike in loan growth. Due to this, wealth management activities could increase, leading to higher fee income.
Taking the above into context, I am of the view that the changing landscape has caused OCBC to accelerate the transformation from a banking conglomerate to a financial conglomerate. A successful integration outcome could see OCBC share price bursting past the $30 mark.
Financial performance
No bank in Singapore has managed an insurer so successful like what OCBC did. In FY2024, GEH delivered robust results as insurance income to OCBC grew 14% year-on-year to $917 million, led by higher income from the underlying insurance business and improved claim experience. The insurer followed up with another excellent results in for 9MFY2025 as insurance income to OCBC was $843 million.
Not surprising, Net Interest Income (NII) for Q3FY2025 declined by 9% year-on-year to $2,230 million. NIM contracted 11 basis points to 1.84%, as loan yields tightened at a faster pace than deposit costs, in a declining interest rate environment. Non-interest income was up 15% to $1.57 billion, driven largely by wealth management, brokerage and fund management activities, as well as loan-related and investment banking fees.
Total NPAs were nearly $3 billion as at September 2025, an increase of 7% year-on-year. Total NPA coverage amounted to 160%. Customer deposits rose 11% from a year ago, mainly driven by growth in CASA deposits from both corporate and consumer segments, with CASA ratio rising to above 50%.
Overall, it is no doubt that OCBC has put in place a diversified portfolio designed for growth while having a strong capital position. The offer for Great Eastern will strengthen its earnings in the near-term and serves as buffer for the drop in NII. However, its adventure in the Greater China may expose certain level of risks for the bank as the loan for Greater China is estimated at about 232% of its total loan portfolio as at September 2025. Given the protracted economic slowdown in China, OCBC’s banking performances may be bogged down by the continuing slowdown of the world’ second largest economy in 2026.
Long-term strategic value of Great Eastern
In recent years, OCBC share price was seen as being in laggard due to the lack of acquisitions while DBS and UOB had acquired Citigroup’s assets in Taiwan and ASEAN respectively. And then in October 2023, Great Eastern acquired AmMetLife Insurance Berhad, a Malaysian insurer, for $325 million.
AmMetLife will not be a gamechanger for Great Eastern nor OCBC Group as its FY2022 and FY2023 profit tax amounted to just RM76.1 million and RM65.8 million. Instead, the compelling reason for the acquisition should be to expand Great Eastern’s distribution network in Malaysia. Great Eastern is already a leading insurance player in Malaysia and the acquisition should entrench its market leadership in Malaysia.
Evidently, OCBC is determined to integrate Great Eastern as part of its long-term growth strategy to become a financial services powerhouse. Previously, I speculated that the acquisition of the remaining outstanding shares of Great Eastern not owned by OCBC could cost the bank $1 billion (assuming a slight premium of 25% to Great Eastern share price). However, I did not expect OCBC to be so generous to make an offer that was 37% premium to the last traded price of GEH shares. This could cost OCBC about $1.4 billion to privatise GEH.
Through the announcements made in recent years, it can be gleaned that the long-term strategy for OCBC is to focus its growth in the Greater China. By leveraging its private bank, Bank of Singapore, OCBC can channel its wealth management and insurance products to the wealthy clients in Greater China through its Wing Hang Bank, which has its headquarters strategically located in Shanghai. Together, the three assets formed the “Golden Triangle” for OCBC. In Greater China, OCBC also owns a 20% stake in Bank of Ningbo.
On 3 July 2023, OCBC announced consolidate its “ASEAN-China” strategy, with the aim of deliver $3 billion in incremental revenue by 2025. To support its goal of $3 billion in incremental revenue over the next three years, OCBC will make further investments into its wholesale banking business. According to the bank, $140 million has already been invested over the past three years to build up its digital capabilities.
Bank of Singapore, OCBC’s private banking subsidiary, likewise aims to increase its AUM – to USD145 billion by end 2025. To reach this AUM target, Bank of Singapore will grow its team of relationship managers to 500 by then. The bank will also double the number of relationship managers serving high-net worth customers in the Premier Banking and Premier Private Client segment in Greater China by 2025.
OCBC’s recent push to expand in China came after the country implemented the scrapping of foreign ownership policy on homegrown banks in July 2020. Although China is facing an ongoing economic slump, the policy change represents a golden opportunity for Singapore banks to capture growth in the world’ second largest economy. In this regard, I am of the view that OCBC is going to increase its stake in Ningbo bank and use it as a vehicle to expand its presence in China.
Conclusion
For bank stocks, market confidence means everything. With more Fed rate cuts expected in 2026, institutional fund houses are expected to return, thereby increasing buying interests in shares. Being one of the heavy weights in STI, OCBC stands to benefit from this development. In addition to that, the privatisation of Great Eastern could add more fireworks for OCBC. However, Donald Trump’s trade tariffs and the ensuing trade war between US and China has led to concerns of a looming recession.
Thus, in the short-term, I foresee support level for OCBC shares to be at $20 and resistance level to be $25.00. Beyond 2026, OCBC should be able to hit $30 in the long term on the condition of a successful implementation of “One OCBC Strategy” in Singapore, ASEAN and Greater China markets. On this note, I would think it would make sense to have a hit-and-run approach for OCBC shares at this juncture. Till then, enjoy the ride.
