Standard Chartered doubles down on affluent customers through launch of priority banking

Mumbai: Standard Chartered Bank is doubling down on its strategy of focusing on affluent customers through the launch of its priority banking suite of products. The products include wealth expertise, international banking, sales and service expertise, and lifestyle benefits.

The foreign bank first unveiled its affluent market strategy in October 2024. Earlier, it offered all products to all segments of customers–similar to India's private banks.

“We refreshed our strategy, and shifted from a position of being everything to everyone at the same time, to having a very focused approach on the affluent and SME segments overlaid with wealth solutions,” said Aditya Mandloi, head of wealth and retail banking, India and South Asia.

Since then, the bank has been working to expand the network of ‘large format branches’ that are dedicated to affluent customer segments. On Tuesday, it launched an invite-only metal credit card called ‘Beyond’ based on feedback from its clientele.

Mandloi said the bank wants to keep the card exclusive and is not targeting or trying to catch up to a number for cards-in-force or number of card users.

“We want to make the Beyond card, make it bespoke and invitation only, not for numbers, but as an experiential platform for our privileged customers to avail lifestyle benefits,” he said, adding that the bank remains open to co-branded opportunities in this space for further card launches. Currently, the bank has around 700,000 credit card users.

Investing in the five P’s

“Over the last 12 months, what we've done is investing and upgrading in the five P’s–people, platforms, products, premises and proposition,” Mandloi told Mint on the sidelines of the launch of the bank's “refreshed” priority banking vertical.

This includes investing in skilling, training and hiring employees and relationship managers with the right skill set and experience, and upgrading select branches to dedicated affluent centres, among other initiatives.

The bank currently has 98 branches across 41 cities, of which 20 are large format or affluent banking centres. It has plans to upgrade or relocate another 15 branches this year compared with 11 last year.

Recent large format upgrades for the bank comprise its branches in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bhubaneswar and Dehradun.

“The differentiator really is what is the quality of relationship managers, how skilled they are, the seamless servicing you do across all formats,” Mandloi said, adding that part of the strategy is to have a multi-product approach and avoid opening relationships with customers that may only want to have one particular product such as the credit card.

Standard Chartered currently operates with four broad categories of customers–personal or individuals, emerging affluent, priority, and private.

“Based on where they sit, there will be a certain set of benefits and privileges which open up,” he explained. Of the total 1.7 million customers, 500,000 are standalone that have one product. Around 38,000 are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with annual turnover of $1 million to $100 million.

As of date, around 125,000 of the bank’s customers are eligible to be offering priority banking services, Mandloi said.

To service them, the bank plans to have 380-400 affluent relationship managers who cater to priority and private customer segments, and 250-270 relationship managers to cater to SME clients.

Other than this, the bank is also investing in about 60 wealth advisory or wealth investment specialists and bancassurance specialists.

“All these put together go up to 750-800 specialists who are highly trained and skilled to address the requirements and needs and wants of the customer,” Mandloi said.