Standard Chartered bringing video banking to Asia, Africa and Middle East
Nice to see you…
Standard Chartered Bank is bringing its video banking service to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the “biggest roll-out of its kind by any international bank”.
The bank says more than five million clients in nine markets across the continents will get access. The service is already live in Malaysia and Singapore, and will launch in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, Kenya and the UAE by the end of 2016.
Karen Fawcett, Standard Chartered Bank’s CEO for retail banking, says: “Video banking is about giving our clients more choice and more convenience. Now you don’t have to come in to a branch to talk to somebody face-to-face.”
Standard Chartered says clients can speak with banking consultants over a “secure” video connection from a location of their choice – “all they need is a laptop”. This new sales and service channel allows clients to do “almost anything” they can do in a branch, from “signing up for a new card to finding a mortgage”.
In addition to video, the bank says retail banking clients will be able to connect with banking consultants through web chat and audio links on its website.
Money talks
It’s been an eventful year for the bank.
Recently, it announced plans to invest $3 billion in strengthening it technology, retail and private banking and wealth management operations. As part of this, $30 million will be invested over the next three years in Scope International, the bank’s global shared services centre in Malaysia.
Temenos landed a major deal with the bank, to modernise its wealth management software across 30+ countries.
The bank compiled a report questioning whether blockchain could disrupt the European Central Bank’s (ECB) Target2Securities (T2S) project; rolled out a new mobile and online banking platform to eight markets in Africa; and launched its digital “bank on an iPad” sales-and-service tool in eight new market.
