Targeting emerging affluent clients in Asia, Standard Chartered Bank (渣打銀行) plans to recruit 850 customer relation managers in the next 18 months, 430 of whom will be deployed in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, to provide upgraded premium banking services, a bank executive said yesterday.
“We hope to double our [high net worth] client base [in the eight major Asian markets] over the next three years,” Singapore-based Foo Mee Har (胡美霞), global head of the company’s premium banking, told a media briefing in Taipei.
The bank expects its sales of premium services to grow more than double the industry’s growth rate, said Foo, who refused to reveal the bank’s current number of affluent clients or the total assets under the bank’s management.
Standard Chartered defines affluent clients as those who have more than US$100,000 in disposable assets.
Foo said the region’s wealth accumulation had a greater potential than countries in Europe or the US.
In Taiwan, the affluent population could grow from 1.7 million last year to 2 million in 2012, while that in China is expected to grow from 8.8 million to 13.7 million and India from 1.3 million to 1.8 million, she said, citing estimates by Boston Consulting Group.
Moreover, the number of Taiwanese who have more than US$1 million in assets has already reached 250,000 people, more than in Switzerland, Foo said.
Asia (excluding Japan) topped other emerging markets, with an annualized 16 percent growth in wealth between 2003 and last year, compared with Latin America’s 14 percent and North American’s 6 percent, and is expected to see another combined annualized growth of 12 percent between last year and 2012 — the world’s highest, she said.
Standard Chartered offers to waive transaction fees for its premium clients and up to three of their family members when wiring money to overseas bank accounts.
The bank also provides discounts for foreign exchange services and a three-hour wire transfer in US dollars between China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
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