In a LinkedIn post, Neal Cross announced that he has ended his tenure as DBS Bank’s Chief Innovation Officer.

Neal, who is considered a thought leader in the innovation space, is also known for evangelizing fintech in Singapore. Neal will focus on his Orangutan conservation efforts, following his departure from DBS, and will spend more time driving social enterprises in Indonesia. 

“During my time I have worked with some of the brightest minds in finance and will miss them dearly, but I won’t miss anyone as much as my team or as we refer to ourselves #teamawesome, the most passionate and creative people I have ever worked with,” Neal says in the post.

DBS Bank has promoted the innovation head of ecosystems, Bidyut Dumra to lead the innovation team and promoted the innovation management head Mark Evans to run the experience strategy team to take them to even higher levels of success.

“For me, the role of an innovation leader is to create innovators, not apps. It’s about people, not technology. If you can create inspire and educate the entire workforce to do their careers best work and to constantly strive to create the amazing then the company is unstoppable," Neal adds.

Neal will be launching a book which is about building Hotel Orangutan and the philosophies he learned from the jungle and how this was applied to his corporate innovation journey. He is also working as an advisor on several projects across Asia and beyond, many of them outside of banking.

Image credit:Managment Events