StanChart Explores Reopening Its Private Bank in Switzerland

(Bloomberg) — Standard Chartered Plc is considering reestablishing its private bank in Switzerland as part of the lender’s efforts to bulk up its offerings for wealthy customers.

The company is weighing reopening an office in Geneva as part of the deliberations, according to people familiar with the matter. Standard Chartered likely wouldn’t reestablish its presence in the city until 2027 at the earliest, one of the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information.

A spokesperson for Standard Chartered declined to comment.

The deliberations come about a decade after Standard Chartered was forced to wind down its Swiss private banking operation after trying and failing to find a buyer for the business.

At the time, Standard Chartered was undergoing a massive restructuring that involved shedding dozens of non-core business as executives sought to expand the bank’s presence in faster-growing markets across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Now, though, Standard Chartered says its burgeoning wealth business is key to its plans for boosting returns. In December, it set an ambitious target to bring in $200 billion in net new money from wealth clients over the next five years.

So far, the effort seems to be bearing fruit: Standard Chartered onboarded 67,000 clients to its wealth platform in the third quarter alone. The division has generated $2.41 billion in revenue during the first nine months of the year, a 25% increase from the same period a year ago.

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