Standard Chartered nabs an award in the Wealth Banking category at the HKB Greater Bay Area Enterprise Awards

The bank accelerates market influence to boost its brand and thought leadership in the region. 

With an aim to strengthen the cross-boundary cooperation of various businesses and to become the “go-to Bank” in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), Standard Chartered has demonstrated resilience in the year 2021 with a positive growth and a very strong momentum despite the pandemic. As the first foreign bank to create the new role and appoint the CEO of GBA to drive its GBA strategy, Standard Chartered looks ahead and aims to triple income from the region in the next five years.

For this, Standard Chartered has won an award in the Wealth Banking category in the recent Hong Kong Business'  Greater Bay Area Enterprise Awards. Organised by Hong Kong Business, the awards aim to recognise outstanding companies for their excellent performance and commitment to drive collaborative and economic development between Hong Kong and the Mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area. 

Committed to actively promoting its strengths and developments in GBA, Standard Chartered was one of the first banks to sell investment products under the Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect (WMC) scheme, providing clients with more than 100 investment product options since the launch of the scheme last October. The services were well received by both Mainland and Hong Kong investors with Standard Chartered ranking the first among foreign banks in terms of account opening in the Shenzhen market.  The bank has also launched the first GBA-themed QDII global fund product to help Chinese investors seize the emerging investment opportunities in GBA.

With an investment of US$40m, Standard Chartered set up its GBA Centre to create a newly-designed flexi-work office environment and to facilitate greater synergy and collaboration across departments. The centre, which completed the first phase of development in  August 2021, has over 250 employees currently and plans to increase the number of people to 1600 by 2023. It acts as a centre of excellence in deploying new technologies, transforming processes and expanding product capabilities in eCommerce, Wealth Management and Financial Markets. 

Standard Chartered is also increasing its investment in Fintech alliance to support SMEs, new economy and import/export trade. In January 2020, Standard Chartered made a strategic investment in Linklogis, a leading supply chain financing platform in China to enhance its supply chain ecosystem proposition. The bank issued the first blockchain-technology-powered international offshore RMB letter of credit on Contour, an open trade finance network. 

Moreover, Standard Chartered collaborated with Shenzhen Capital Group to participate in the “Belt and Road” and GBA initiatives and deepen the financial and capital markets in GBA and overseas markets.  The bank also signed a memorandum of understanding with Shenzhen Swiftpass Technologies, an integrated mobile payment solution provider, to strengthen cross-border linkage and e-commerce business in GBA.

To drive key trends and insightful analysis, Standard Chartered collaborates with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council to put up the Standard Chartered GBA Business Confidence Index, the first forward-looking quarterly survey in the market that looks at the business sentiment and synergistic effects across GBA cities and industries. 

Sustainability is a top priority of Standard Chartered as it targets to reach net zero carbon emissions in its financing activities by 2050. The bank recently announced an ambitious interim target by mobilising US$300 billion in green and transition finance by 2030. To promote net zero transition in GBA, Standard Chartered is conducting thought leadership research on the GBA Deep Decarbonisation Pathway and Transition Financing Opportunity to identify and drive its sustainable finance strategy, and to offer insights for financial institutions.