Stephen Man, managing director and head of consumer, private and business banking at Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), on what differentiates the bank from the competition
What is the role of sustainability leadership in shaping Standard Chartered Hong Kong’s overall strategy and its impact on customer engagement and brand perception?
At Standard Chartered Hong Kong, we are committed to sustainable social and economic development through our business, operations and communities as well as integrating sustainability into all our decision-making, bringing to life our brand promise ‘Here for Good’.
- Business: Our priority is delivering sustainable finance solutions that support sustainable development, economic growth and job creation. Our suite of green retail products such as green mortgages, sustainable payroll accounts and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investment funds appeal to environmentally conscious clients and provide them with opportunities to contribute to positive change.
- People: We are also committed to creating a supportive, diverse and inclusive workplace for our people, which enables them to realise their full potential, unlock innovation, make better decisions and deliver our business strategy. This also helps us to attract and retain talents.
- Community: We focus on giving back to the community through signature sponsorship programmes and staff volunteering. Over the years, Standard Chartered Hong Kong has sponsored several community initiatives, donated to the needy and encouraged employee volunteering through sharing skills and expertise, all of which aim to transform lives and create a more inclusive society.
These strategies not only contribute to a more sustainable future but also position the bank as a responsible and forward-thinking institution that differentiates us from our competitors.
How does the bank ensure seamless integration of innovative technologies while maintaining a focus on personalised and secure financial solutions?
In 2023, we initiated a multi-year transformation programme, establishing agile teams and in-house campaigns to enhance our digital capabilities. This strategic move aimed to shift our organisational mindset and behaviours for digital sales, aligning with clients’ evolving needs.
Simultaneously, we prioritised back-end innovation and invested in technological infrastructure.
Our focus was on fortifying our systems, fostering synergy among digital assets, and upgrading the core banking system. This upgrade not only improved speed to market but also equipped us to handle a larger transaction volume as our franchise expanded.
Additionally, we are committed to ongoing efforts to enhance the interoperability of legacy systems with new digital tools. This ensures clients receive real-time, efficient services while maintaining the integrity of our operations.
How does the bank plan to capitalise on the momentum gained post-pandemic to strengthen its position in bancassurance?
Post-pandemic there is a stronger demand for health and protection insurance from clients. Since insurance products are longer-term products, they are not affected by the short-term market volatility that many clients are facing.
Responding to this demand, Standard Chartered Hong Kong worked with its partners to enhance its High-Net-Worth (HNW) medical plan and critical illness plan in 2023 to offer better insurance solutions for clients. We have also gone the extra mile by launching value-added services such as Virtual ME (allows virtual doctor consultations) and PruNurse (allows clients to WhatsApp for bookings and consultations) for our health and protection (H&P) clients to enhance their experience and provide better post-sales services. As a result, our H&P product mix recorded significant growth in 2023.
In 2024, we are planning to offer value-added wellness services such as comprehensive body and dental check-ups and pain therapies to selected H&P and even non-H&P clients.
With China’s borders reopening in 2023, the bank captured incremental business from its Greater China (GC) clients. We continuously worked with our partners to enhance our insurance solutions for the segment in 2023; for example, we enhanced our cashless cancer treatment services in the Greater Bay Area and clients can now receive professional oncology treatment in Hong Kong or Mainland China. In 2024, we will continue to enhance our tailored products and services to GC clients.
How is the bank prioritising digital penetration in credit cards and wealth management in its digital transformation strategy?
Credit card: With a strong aspiration to expand our personal banking client base, we have adopted a partnership-led and digital-first model by leveraging industry partnerships and upscaling digital capabilities to accelerate growth.
We believe digital is the way to go to drive credit card acquisition as well as equip card holders to conduct a wide range of self-services including but not limited to card activation, reporting stolen/lost cards, requests for service charge waiver and initiating a transaction dispute.
We have seen promising results as our cards acquisition reached an overall 90% digital share and cards servicing achieved over 80% digital adoption. We will continue to drive full digitisation for mass market clients. In 2024 and beyond, we will work on our eKYC solutions to enhance the straight-through-processing (STP) rate and thus client experience. We will also leverage open application programme interfaces (APIs) to capture income data from other banks via Interbank Account Data Sharing pilot programme for STP ineligible clients.
Our clients can expect to see more product enhancements with simpler intuitive experiences that proactively engage them, and development of our exclusive partnerships with local carrier Cathay and third-party payment platform Alipay.
Wealth Management: We aspire to be the leading international wealth manager and the preferred affluent brand for our clients. Grow affluent and build wealth continuums are our key strategic priorities. As such, we have continued to develop new tools and introduce new features in the digital wealth space to enhance wealth management services and client experience. The bank’s myWealth digital service is accessible via mobile banking and relationship managers (RMs), and helps investors gain personalised insights to facilitate investment decisions aligned with their objectives.
Using client data such as current portfolio holdings, risk tolerance and financial goals, myWealth delivers personalised investment recommendations and insights underpinned by the bank’s Chief Investment Office house views.
Investors can cross-reference different portfolios tailored to their target outcomes, drawing upon the bank’s expertise to diversify their portfolios in a well-informed manner. These digital tools allow our clients to view performance data and receive analytics-driven portfolio health checks at their convenience.
Standard Chartered Hong Kong is exploring enhancements to its myRM digital platform that would allow RMs to securely share product sales documents with clients, enabling end-to-end completion of transactions for select offerings digitally.
With this enhancement, we expect the transactional time to be reduced by two-thirds.