The UK-based, emerging markets-focused lender is a big player in India’s financial sector. Standard Chartered Bank’s history in the south Asian market stretches back more than 160 years, and it has more than 100 branches in 43 cities, including bespoke private banking offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore, while also serving high net-worth families in a host of other first-tier cities, including Kolkata.
Under the aegis of Aman Rajoria, its India head of private bank, Standard Chartered acquires net new money primarily by focusing on a long-standing core of top-end clients.
In recent years, it has cut its roster of relationship managers to 23 from 38 and streamlined wealth management, re-prioritising hundreds of clients upward into private banking, and many others downward, into priority or retail banking.
Its aim is to serve a smaller core of HNW and UHNW families, whose wealth is located onshore as well as scattered around the world. That ties in with a focus on delivering new services geared to the needs of its global Indian clientele, including an NRI deposit scheme tailored to non-resident Indians, and the leveraging of its One Bank franchise, which attracted $790 million in new deposits in 2019.
StanChart’s financial performance in a generally tough year was notable. Income rose 3% year on year, with assets under management up 6% on an annualized basis to $10.5 billion, and lending rising 3%.
It opened 126 new accounts in 2019, and reckons it manages the wealth of roughly 40% of India’s richest families. AuM per relationship manager jumped 143% in 2019, though this sharp rise can be explained in part by the fall in the number of in-house RMs.
StanChart invests heavily in training its bankers and in the financial education of younger customers. It partnered with Fitch Learning and Insead to build a bespoke training scheme for its front-line private banking team, and created a next-generation programme for millennials, which focuses on instilling better qualities of leadership, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, sustainability and communication.