Standard Chartered, one of Hong Kong’s three note-issuing banks, will continue to hire additional private bankers and open more new wealth management centres in the city as part of its ambition to garner US$200 billion of new money from affluent clients over the next five years, according to a top executive.
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“Affluent wealth management and cross-border businesses have been, and continue to be, our twin growth engines in Hong Kong,” Mary Huen Wai-yi, CEO of Hong Kong, Greater China and North Asia, said in a media briefing last week.
Standard Chartered this year will open its sixth cross-border wealth management centre in the city, she said. The bank currently operates five such facilities to serve high-net-worth clients, including in the tourist hotspot of Tsim Sha Tsui.
“We have found that high-net-worth and affluent clients respond positively to these cross-border wealth management centres,” she said. “We have already set up such centres in Taiwan and Shanghai in recent years [and] we are considering similar centres in Greater Bay Area cities such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou.”
The bank would continue to hire more wealth experts, she added, noting that it had already hired some 100 relationship managers in Hong Kong last year to serve high-net-worth customers.
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The recruitments were part of the lender’s US$1.5 billion investment in the wealth-management business over the next five years, with Hong Kong set to be the focus of the expansion, group CEO Bill Winters said in a media briefing on February 21 to announce the full-year results.
