Digital Channels to Drive Standard Chartered’s Retail Growth

Standard Chartered’s digital banking and investment platforms have been given a boost by the Covid-19 pandemic, as digital adoption rates in Singapore hit historic highs in the first four months of 2020.

Digital sign-up for credit cards growing by 71 percent year-on-year, while wealth and investment-related transactions more than doubled during the same period. The number of digital transactions grew by 30 percent in March, and the number of mobile banking users grew by 42 percent year-on-year.

As such, the bank expects digital services to be a key growth driver for its Retail Banking business in Singapore this year, Standard Chartered said in a press release on Wednesday. The bank has bulked up its digital solutions in recent years, expanding its real-time onboarding, remittance services, and investment platform.

There is no doubt that client behaviors and habits have shifted in the past months, and we will see sustained levels of clients opting to go digital as much as possible,» Dwaipayan Sadhu, Standard Chartered’s head of retail banking in Singapore, said about the increase in online banking.

Standard Chartered Singapore said its Wealth Management arm has also witnessed a strong migration to digital and strong growth on its digital investment platforms. The number of transactions and volume increased by over 200 percent year-on-year, while the number of monthly digital transactions on the Online Mutual Funds and Online Trading platform grew 238 percent and 160 percent respectively since the beginning of 2020.

Applications for the bank’s Online Trading platform in April were 129 percent higher than the monthly average in 2019, and the monthly volume of transactions on its real-time foreign exchange platform grew 245 percent in 2020.