“We are focused on opening more wealth management centres to serve the affluent population in the area and improve the service quality to sustain the strong business performance,” Stephen Man Wai-shing, head of wealth and retail banking at Standard Chartered Hong Kong, said at the launch of the bank’s fifth such centre last week in the tourist hotspot of Tsim Sha Tsui.
The centre provides banking services for affluent local, cross-border and international clients. The next outlet would be in Central, complementing the existing one at Exchange Square, with a soft launch towards the end of this year, Man said. Future facilities in locations such as Causeway Bay were also being considered, he added.
The robust growth in services for affluent clients drove Standard Chartered’s profit up 21 per cent in 2024, prompting group CEO Bill Winters to set an ambitious goal of attracting US$200 billion of wealth-management business worldwide from newly affluent people in the next five years.
Another growth area for the bank in Hong Kong is mainland SMEs with a focus on imports. Standard Chartered recently started working with Cainiao, a Chinese e-commerce logistics provider and Alibaba Group Holding affiliate, to streamline lending processes for SMEs based on transaction data. Alibaba owns the Post.
Data from Cainiao would help the bank “quicken and enlarge credit approvals” as part of its efforts to support SME development and transformation, Man said.
