POSB Bank, often known as POSB, is a Singaporean bank offering consumer banking services and is the oldest local bank in continuous operation in Singapore. Established on 1 January 1877 as the Post Office Savings Bank, the bank now operates as part of DBS Bank, which acquired the institution and its subsidiaries on 16 November 1998. Prior to its acquisition, the bank was a major public bank offering low-cost banking services to Singaporeans. DBS Bank attempts to continue this tradition by promising to keep costs low for basic savings accounts, and to exempt children, full-time students below the age of 21 years and full-time National Servicemen from bank charges. History Founded on 1 January 1877 as the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB), the bank was part of the Postal Services Department in the Straits Settlements. It was set up by the colonial government to provide banking services for lower-income citizens within the Straits Settlement. Headquartered in the General Post Office Building, in Raffles Place, the bank was under the administration of the Postmaster General and bank policies were decided by a board of trustees, which was designated by the Governor of the Straits Settlements. From 1877 to 1940, the number of accounts opened increased from 211 to 57,000 and the total deposits increased from 19,862 to 14.3 million Straits dollars during the same period of time. Following the end of the Second World War and the dissolution of the Straits Settlements, the 1948 Savings Bank Ordinance came into effect and in 1949, POSB was separated from the other post office savings banks in Malaya, with the bank's assets and liabilities split between Singapore and Malaya. The Malayan branch eventually became Bank Simpanan Nasional in 1974. After the separation from 1949 to 1955, the total deposits of the bank increased from M$27.4 million to M$57.6 million and in 1951, the bank had its 100,000th depositor. Decline and revival Reaching its peak in 1955, the bank had a slow decline from 1957 to 1966, where the total deposits decrased to M$37.4 million. After Singapore's independence in 1965, the country went through a rapid industrialisation programme. To develop the infrastructure of the infant city-state, Minister for Finance Goh Keng Swee set up a savings bank committee, which was later reconstituted into a permanent advisory committee within the bank to promote domestic savings through POSB to provide the Singapore government with a non-inflationary source