A report by Brand Finance has given DBS the most valuable brand in Singapore - and two of its local rivals rank in the top five.

Not content with having high marks for the quality of its banking apps, DBS has won the top spot for having the most valuable brand in Singapore, according to an index published late last week.

And OCBC and United Overseas Bank, two of the other big locally listed banks in the city state, ranked in the top five for their brand value.

Brand Index, a UK-based consultancy that tracks brands’ potency and visibility, said Singapore-listed DBS has a total brand value of $4.011 billion and enterprise value of $32.36 billion; that puts it above Singapore Airlines. The carrier has a brand value of $3.25 billion and enterprise value of $7.009 billion (interestingly demonstrating how the airline has a narrower gap between the brand and enterprise values than is the case for DBS).

The data was carried in a report called The Brand Finance Top 100 Singapore Brands Report 2014.

In third place in the rankings is Wilmar, the agri-business group, followed in fourth by OCBC, the Singapore-based bank and parent of Bank of Singapore. In this case, the brand value is $2.333 billion and enterprise value is $27.08 billion. In fifth place is United Overseas Bank (which has a wealth management firm); its brand value is $2.185 billion and enterprise value of $25.721 billion. In sixth place is Keppel, the telecoms and communications firm, followed in seventh place by telecom firm Singtel; in eighth place is Great Eastern, the life insurer, and in ninth, is F&N, the drinks firm, and bringing up the rear at tenth is Sembcorp Industries, a water, energy and marine group.

For the purpose of this study, brand value is, it says, defined as the “net present value of the estimated future cash flows attributable to the brand”. (A number of factors will lead into such a measure, such as intellectual property rights, for example.) Enterprise value, meanwhile, is defined as “the combined market value of the equity and debt of a business less cash and cash equivalents”.

The firm has been researching and tracking the role of intangible assets since 2001 as part of its annual Global Intangible Finance Tracker (GIFT™) with an emphasis on helping corporations understand brand strength and value. “Overall, the 2014 GIFT study shows that the value of the top 57,000 companies in the world has recovered from the ‘double drip’ result in 2011. The global enterprise value is up by 12 per cent to $6.7 trillion in 2013,” it said.

The enterprise value of corporate Singapore at the end of 2013 increased to $505 billion, up from $464 billion in December 2012 but it still stays below the 2010 level when it had reached an all-time high of $534 billion. The total value of Singapore’s 100 largest brands and brand portfolios in 2014 is $40.20 billion, representing a marginal decrease over last year’s study as compared to 14 per cent and 11 per cent growth in the 2013 and 2012 studies.

Some clouds
The report also noted reasons for concern. “The top 50 brands account for over 94 per cent of the combined brand value in 2014. It is alarming to see that the brand value of the bottom 50 brands has hardly changed as compared with 2013 and is reduced to a mere 6 per cent. Unless something is done to continuously improve the brand investment and value growth at the lower end of the market, we will likely see this percentage decline further in the coming years,” it said.

In May, MyPrivateBanking Research, a Swiss-based organisation, gave DBS top marks for the quality of its banking apps. (For more on this article, see here.) That report gave a generally downbeat assessment on the quality of many banks’ apps, however, arguing there is considerable room for improvement.