In the fast-paced and dynamic world of retail banking, excelling requires a persistent commitment to anticipating the ever-evolving needs of customers whilst leveraging innovative technologies to deliver seamless, personalised and secure financial solutions.
By continuously upgrading its digital platform and offering new services focused on automation, digitisation and simplification, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited (“Standard Chartered Hong Kong”) has successfully enhanced customer digital experience through an increasing range of products and services.
The retail arm of the bank has continued to make significant progress, delivering a record high full year income and significant growth in total liabilities in 2023, while also witnessing a strong rebound of achievements and opportunities that have positioned it towards achieving even greater success.
Efforts towards digital transformation, including an increased digital penetration in credit card, wealth management and business banking domains, and its delivery of a slew of new initiatives, have led Standard Chartered Hong Kong to win the Best Retail Bank for Digital CX in Hong Kong award at the Digital CX Awards 2024, hosted by The Digital Banker.
Story of Growth
Despite external macroeconomic slowdown and geopolitical tensions last year, Standard Chartered Hong Kong’s retail banking franchise gained strong momentum towards delivering its best-in-class mobile-first, data-driven, partnership-led digital banking strategy.
Mr. Stephen Man
Managing Director, Head, Wealth and Retail Banking Hong Kong
In a major mobile app revamp, Standard Chartered Hong Kong completed the delivery of the SC Mobile App with more advanced capabilities in 2023, offering its customers an enhanced mobile banking experience.
Additionally, the bank also revamped its MarTech stack for hyper-personalisation of its offerings. It also delved into digitising its banking products and capabilities, including deposit, credit card and personal loan products, and has achieved remarkable results across a series of performance metrics in 2023.
The new mobile app comes with a very intuitive design that simplifies 30 plus features into 5 simple categories– namely Home, Pay & Transfer, Invest, Discover and Services, resulting in much ease of navigation.
For example – customers can now view all accounts including assets, investments, and liabilities in one single view without even the need to switch across tabs.
Also, for most of the service requests, customers only need to make 1 click of selection after login and they will reach the target destination without getting lost in the navigation.
It integrates the best-in-class payment and cross-border remittance capabilities in one single app that drives exceptional usability –
- Standard Chartered Hong Kong as the first foreign bank confirmed as a direct participant in CIPS (Cross-border Interbank Payment System), which facilitates cross-border RMB transfer in future;
- Add Payee capability (for both local & international transfer) can now be done securely on the new app with a few easy clicks;
- Customers can enjoy same day international transfer in +30 locations (such as UK, Singapore & EU countries).
Digital-First Approach
In response to customer’s changing behaviours, the bank adopted a digital-first strategy that put a high priority on enriching overall digital capabilities.
While the SC mobile app also saw its own upgrade, the bank decided to offer more deposit products via the app, including a Marathon Savings Account (MSA), Time Deposit (TD) and Wealth Saver Account (WSA), which saw higher uptakes digitally.
The bank also collaborated with established ecosystems such as AliPayHK (Q Credit Card) and Cathay Pacific (co-branded card) to facilitate digital sales and enhanced offerings for its mass market and affluent customers.
