Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan Ltd (渣打台灣銀行) yesterday said it took home the International Retail Bank of the Year — Taiwan and the Digital Banking Initiative of the Year — Taiwan from this year’s Retail Banking Awards presented by Asian Banking and Finance magazine.
The event honors the most outstanding banks and financial institutions that have introduced groundbreaking products and services to empower them to adapt to a rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Standard Chartered Taiwan’s retail banking shows that it deserves its spot as one of the top retail businesses among the international banks in Taiwan. With its attractive returns, it continues to grow its franchise in a profitable and cost-effective way, while successfully navigating headwinds due to the COVID-19 pandemic and volatile global market conditions.
Photo courtesy of Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan Ltd
“We are delighted to receive this commendation from Asian Banking and Finance,” Standard Chartered Taiwan retail banking head Kate Lin (林素真) said. “This is the testimony to the efforts to reinvent and digitize the business model with a human touch. It also demonstrated the right strategy of focusing on clients, which inspired the team to continue to provide the best services to our clients and to further discover their unmet needs.”
Last year, Standard Chartered Taiwan delivered significant growth in income and operating profit. With the bank’s strategic focus on high-net-wealth and affluent segments, top-line growth was mainly driven by underlying wealth management growth, coupled with double-digit growth in core lending products.
Moreover, to capture the swift changes in client behavior and the evolution of financial services, Standard Chartered Taiwan has reinvented its business model along with innovative digital initiatives with its launch of SC Taiwan Line official accounts and SC Keyboard Banking last year.
The Line accounts aim to extend banking services from clients’ fingertips to their social activities.
Embedded in SC Line official accounts, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot named Stacy provides instant, round-the-clock interactive support with the know-how to fulfill requests and solve problems, ranging from the latest product offerings to credit card payments and reward point inquiries.
SC Keyboard Banking is the first-ever keyboard-based social media payment capability in Taiwan, which allows people to send money and view account balances without interrupting their social moments on messaging apps. The application boasts three key features of this cutting-edge service: seamless client journey, gamification and community, as well as single tap to banking services.
SC Keyboard Banking empowers clients’ digital capability in an easy and seamless way, and has received broad and positive feedback.
This year, Standard Chartered Taiwan said it aims to continue to expand partnerships with fintech, tech and e-commerce companies to build an ecosystem and originate the younger digital adopter segment.
The bank also aims to leverage COVID-19 prevention experiences, continue to build a future-proof organization by cultivating agile ways of working and building an active-learning culture to equip its entire workforce with future skills, it said.
SPEED OF LIGHT: US lawmakers urged the commerce department to examine the national security threats from China’s development of silicon photonics technology US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday said it is finalizing rules that would limit US investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security. The rules, which were proposed in June by the US Department of the Treasury, were directed by an executive order signed by Biden in August last year covering three key sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain AI systems. The rules are to take effect on Jan. 2 next year and would be overseen by the Treasury’s newly created Office of Global Transactions. The Treasury said the “narrow
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
SPECIALIZIATION: OpenAI is designing a new type of semiconductor with Broadcom that would run artificial intelligence software and respond to user requests OpenAI is working with Broadcom Inc to develop a new artificial intelligence (AI) chip specifically focused on running AI models after they have been trained, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The AI start-up and chipmaker are also consulting with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest chip contract manufacturer, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. OpenAI has been planning a custom chip and working on such uses for the technology for about a year, but the discussions are still at an early stage, the sources said. OpenAI declined
TECHNOLOGY EXIT: The selling of Apple stock might be related to the death of Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger last year, an analyst said Billionaire Warren Buffett is now sitting on more than US$325 billion in cash after continuing to unload billions of US dollars worth of Apple Inc and Bank of America Corp shares this year and continuing to collect a steady stream of profits from all of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s assorted businesses without finding any major acquisitions. Berkshire on Saturday said it sold off about 100 million more Apple shares in the third quarter after halving its massive investment in the iPhone maker the previous quarter. The remaining stake of about 300 million shares was valued at US$69.9 billion at the end of