For the full-year to December 2024, StanChart's total income stood at P1.065 billion earning an operating income of P478 million. The increase in earnings was attributed to the growth of the WRB division and improvement in margins enjoyed from wealth management and banking products targeting the middle-income members of society.
In a briefing this week, the banks officials shared that the WRB division had been boosted by an increase in wealth assets under management which grew three times in comparison to 2023, with the broader WRB division growing by 11%.
“Wealth assets under management have grown three times in the same period driven by growing uptake of both local and foreign investment asset classes,”officials stated at the briefing. “The segment closed the year with reported income of P791 million, an 11% growth,” officials revealed.
The banks operating income has been on a steady rise from 2021, further supported by a rising Return on Equity value. Between 2021 and 2024, the banks’ operating income rose by P401 million.
Last year the bank created a splash in the market when it announced that it was looking to offload its WRB division, choosing to only focus on its Corporate and Investment Banking division.
The sale will also take place in Standard Chartered PLC’s subsidiaries in Zambia and Uganda in line with a decision to “reshape” the mass retail business and “sell all or part of a small number of businesses where the strategic rationale is not sufficiently compelling”.
For Standard Chartered, the decision was prompted by a re-evaluation of its African operations, with the aim of concentrating resources in key markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and India.
Analysts have noted that the bank’s divestiture reflects the changing dynamics in the global banking landscape, where international financial institutions are increasingly consolidating their operations in the wake of shifting economic conditions and rising costs.
Local analysts cautioned, however, that whilst Standard Chartered PLC wanted to focus on large corporate entities, its move would likely be fraught with challenges as the retail sector is the larger, more consistent generator of profits in the local market.
Generally in the local market, large corporates provide deposits and borrow less, earning higher interest rates on their deposits and paying less on the loans they do take. The retail sector deposits less and borrows much more, earning lower interests on its deposits and paying significantly higher rates on loans.
That combination means banks generally make loans to the retail sector from the corporate deposits, paying out less in deposit interest to the retail sector and making more from the loans they make to the sector.
