Standard Chartered aims for £200bn growth in wealth business

Standard Chartered is hoping for $200 billion in new assets as it targets growth from clients looking to move businesses out of China amid the threat of US tariffs from president-elect Donald Trump.
The FTSE 100, Asia-focused bank is also pursuing double-digit income growth in its wealth business over the next five years as part of a broader strategy to focus on higher fee-earning businesses.
Judy Hsu, chief executive of wealth and retail banking, said Standard Chartered wanted to expand its business of wealthy Chinese and Indian clients with offshore and cross-border assets.
The prospect of a tariff war and deepening of the battle for technological hegemony between the US and China has left businesses and high-net worth individuals assessing their positions.
“If you think about Trump 2.0, which potentially can bring on more tariffs, I think that ‘China plus one’ will gather even more momentum,” she said in comments reported by Reuters, referring to Chinese companies relocating manufacturing offshore to minimise the impact of potential US trade barriers. “We’re seeing a lot of our [China] onshore clients — the small and medium enterprises — looking to go outside of China.”
Hsu will move to Hong Kong from Singapore as part of the changes.
Standard Chartered was created 55 years ago from a merger of Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China and Standard Bank of British South Africa. The lender is based in London but its sprawling operations focus on Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
As part of plans to capitalise on the demand for its wealth business, deemed the “gem” of the group, bosses led by Bill Winters, the group chief executive since 2015, announced in October that they would invest $1.5 billion in this area over five years.
This will include hiring more relationship managers and investment advisers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai.
Standard Chartered’s assets under management from globally facing, wealthy Chinese and Indians grew by about 40 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, in the year to the end of September.
The strategy is similar to rival HSBC, which has retrenched its retail business including in the US and invested in wealth management.
Standard Chartered is meanwhile reviewing its consumer services, such as credit cards and small loans.
Shares in Standard Chartered traded up by 1¾p to close at 967¾p on the London Stock Exchange, extending gains this year to about 47 per cent. They were lifted by a strong quarterly trading update in October, when group pre-tax profits increased to $1.7 billion in the three months to the end of September, ahead of the forecasts of City analysts and lifted by a record performance at its wealth solutions unit. It prompted the bank to lift its guidance for adjusted income growth this year to “towards” 10 per cent, up from the more than 7 per cent it predicted in July.