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Priya Nair

Mumbai, Nov. 17 Standard Chartered bank is looking to increase its field force and focus on relationships as a strategy to grow its consumer banking segment. The bank is planning to increase the number of relationship managers (RMs) by 10 per cent, from the current strength of over 1,000, during this fiscal, said Mr Shyam Srinivasan, Country Head (Consumer Banking), India.

“Going forward we will work more on relationship building. The focus areas for our consumer banking segment are SME businesses, which are a big driver of our growth and wealth management,” he said.

The bank will work closely with customers on asset allocation, which is moving towards more balanced and risk related portfolios, given the volatile nature of the equity markets.

“Sentiment is more risk averse and there is a shift towards products that are relatively risk averse,” Mr Srinivasan said.

Currently, StanChart India has under $2 billion of assets under management, from around 2 lakh customers.

The consumer banking segment has seen a growth of 30 per cent revenues in the first half and is likely to see strong double digit growth this fiscal as well.

Even in the home loan segment, the bank will continue to sell mortgage not as a product, but as a relationship, through its ‘Home Saver’ product. Under this scheme, the repayment is based on the balance in the borrower’s account and gives the borrower the flexibility to offset the balance.

For SME clients the relationship proposition would include liability, cross border funding, products to meet forex requirement and for hedging exchange rate risk. This segment has being growing at over 20 per cent annually, and is likely to do so this year as well, Mr Srinivasan said.

StanChart is also looking to extend services under the SME segment to professional services such as doctors, architects, chartered accountants, which are relatively all-weather segments, he added.

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