As the leading bank in Asia’s leading finance country, Singapore, DBS Group has geography on its side. The country has high standards of integrity, tough yet intelligent bank regulation and zero interference from China. What’s more, the bank trades at a reasonable 12 times earnings, with a 2.9% dividend yield. It should form the core of your Pacific Basin holdings.

Among Pacific Wealth’s investment destinations, there’s no question Singapore is the best-run economy. Indeed, it is in many ways the best-run country in the world. It has a GDP per capita, based on purchasing power parity, of $83,000, some 50% higher than the United States. It ranks second to Hong Kong and well above number three New Zealand on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and is number one on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index.

With strict bank-secrecy laws and political independence, Singapore is emerging as the world’s center for private banking and wealth management. Switzerland is too dominated by the European Union, the Caribbean too dominated by the United States, and other tax havens too dominated by the Russian mafia or other crooks.

But Singapore, with its strong institutions and sound policies, is a place your money can feel safe. That makes DBS Group, Singapore’s largest bank, an attractive holding. Rated as Asia’s safest bank for the past six years by Global Finance magazine, DBS has total assets of $332 billion, making it about the size of the largest regional U.S. banks.

In 2014, 62% of the bank’s income came from Singapore, 30% from China (including Hong Kong) and 8% from nearby Southeast Asian countries. It has 200,000 institutional banking customers, 6 million consumer-banking and wealth-management customers, and 21,000 employees. DBS Group’s capital was 15.3% of total assets, well above most Western banks.

About half the bank’s revenue comes from institutional banking, a third from consumer banking and wealth management, and the remainder from treasury and other sources. Contributing about 10% of revenue, investment banking constitutes a significant part of the bank’s business without dominating it, which makes sense given DBS is a fraction of the size of global giants such as JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche or HSBC Holdings.

In 2014, revenue increased 8% and net income 10%. In the first quarter of 2015, revenue was up 17% and net income 35% compared with the previous quarter. Expenses are just 45% of revenue, and the bank offers a solid 11% net return on equity.

DBS Group pays dividends in June and October (going ex-dividend in April and August), and its dividend yield is 2.9%, based on dividends of 58 cents per share ($1.70 per ADR, each of which represents four shares) for 2014. The current price-earnings ratio is 12.6 times historic 2014 earnings, 12 times projected 2015 earnings and 10.2 times projected 2016 earnings, and the shares currently trade at 1.35 times book value.

As a former international banker, I think DBS Group occupies the global sweet spot of banking, with some attractive opportunities in the local market that it dominates; yet, it’s unlikely to be tempted by the foolish mistakes of the behemoths. It has a reasonable rating, an adequate yield and a high degree of safety in one of the world’s best domiciles. You can’t go wrong with this well-priced Conservative Portfolio holding of the highest quality.

Buy DBS Group up to $75.