What's made them Finalists

With Diversity and Inclusion initiatives that go beyond the realms of their organisation, Standard Chartered have innovatively utilised technology to provide their clients with seamless, end-to-end digital solutions for clients across a range of industries. 

Providing clients with end-to-end digital solutions 

Standard Chartered embeds banking into the client’s ecosystem and are focused on unlocking new value through real-time digital solutions fueled by API connectivity - creating seamless and frictionless experiences for clients and to their end customers.

The API-enabled treasury empowers corporate treasurers with speed, control, visibility and versatility. Their APIs also enable innovative business models for clients across a range of industry sectors such as aviation, telecommunications, insurance, technology and media. Eliminating manual operating inefficiencies, reducing turnaround time from several months and days to immediate, instant gratification, real-time reconciliation.

Apart from that, they have achieved several firsts such as the first bank with an API footprint across 37+ markets, API marketplace that can be leveraged by API consumers for API discovery and relevant use-cases. They launched an API-first payout offering called Payouts-as-a-service (PaaS) to enable Nextgen digital commerce. They offer clients the ability to “mash-up” different products through APIs for example FX guaranteed rate quotes combined with cross border cross border payments.

Standard Chartered’s Nextgen Straight2Bank (S2B) suite of services provide clients with seamless access to their digital services and information across a wide variety of form factors. The S2B banking portal provides the complete suite of capabilities to a corporate user while the S2B mobile app empowers users on-the-go. Their built-in chatbots and the contextual Digi-assist offer intelligent, interactive support services to their clients.

Committed to helping their corporate clients achieve the benefits of real-time treasury operations, they bring banking into their client’s ecosystem through their S2B APIs. Their API banking platform initiative allows clients to initiate payments and collections, validate beneficiaries, view account balances, knock-off receivables, request bank guarantees or program trigger-based payments straight from their ERPs or treasury management systems. This also enables new and innovative business models for their clients through iconic use-cases such as topping up mobile e-wallets or offer instant gratification through real-time payout of incentives into distributors bank accounts. Their API marketplace is designed to offer an end-to-end digital experience from discovery of APIs to experimenting these through their sandboxes testing, going live and supporting API integrations with Standard Chartered. |
 

Instilling Diversity and Inclusion within the Organisation and Beyond 

Standard Chartered's annual Diversity and Inclusion week has been organised for the past two years, where employees were encouraged to explore themed discussions on the importance of gender equality and allyship and learn to handle curveballs at every life stage.

They take a data-driven approach to ensure colleagues feel included and respected within the organisation. Their annual employee survey measures the Inclusion Index which comprises of eight pre-existing questions wit their overall inclusion score for 2022 reflecting an improvement at 83% vis a vis their 2021 score of 80.65%. The Inclusion Index takes into consideration concepts of being respected and valued for contributions, being heard and involved in decisions, career development and opportunities and work life balance. They have also seen positive results from all their initiatives and efforts around engendering a strong D&I culture. Women represents 32% of senior leadership roles in Singapore and globally around the bank, a figure they look to increase to 35% by 2025

Female board and senior leadership representation:
• 43% Group Board representation
• 32.8% of the Group Management Team and their direct reports
• 32.1% of Senior Leadership
• 45.3% of their global workforce

Today, their global workforce comprises:
• 120 nationalities
• 100 ethnicities
• Over 170 languages/dialects spoken
• 45.3% women globally
• 2,400+ Pride allies

Their D&I efforts extend beyond their initiatives within the bank. This includes supplier D&I, as they strongly believe that they can make a Bold Stand to embed Supplier D&I, as part of lifting participation and realising their business purpose. They are committed to partnering with only those suppliers who share the same values of inclusivity as them.

In the Community 

Standard Chartered are the sponsors and presenting partners for the ‘Sneak Peak’ programme, an initiative by non-profit SG Her Empowerment to provide 250 young women aged 15 to 21 from underprivileged families with corporate job learning opportunities.

Additionally, they have partnered with Daughters of Tomorrow over two days in July to train 20 women on basic Word and Excel applications, while in June this year, Standard Chartered Bank launched a new Women in Entrepreneurship Incubator in partnership with Singapore Management University’s Lien Centre for Social Innovation. The Incubator is funded by the Bank’s US$300,000 donation to the university to support female entrepreneurship focused on achieving social impact and aspiring and current female entrepreneurs will have access to training, mentoring and seed funding through the Incubator.

The Bank has long-standing partnerships with SG Enable, charity organisations and various Institutes of Higher Learning to bolster their hiring efforts through direct initiatives and community efforts. Some community outreach programmes to reach out to persons with disabilities within the last year include:

• Participation in ‘Inclusive Careers Fair Singapore’ in June 2023,
• Participation in ‘Purple Parade’ organised by SG Enable in October 2022.
• Providing an orientation tour for students from AWWA School to experience being and working in the banking industry in September 2022.

The Bank also continues to engage with organisations working for disability inclusion to understand and initiate possible engagements around recruitment of persons with disabilities. Some such initiatives include:

• Sharing of open career opportunities with disability-inclusive partner organisations to assist in sourcing of suitable candidates
• Posting of evergreen job advertisements and opportunities with SG Enable
• Working with partner organisations to understand needs and to initiate programmes which encourage recruitment efforts to hire persons with disabilities. Such programmes and initiatives may come in the form of mentorship exposure, insight and career knowledge sharing, amongst others.

As a further demonstration of their commitment as a disability-inclusive employer, the Bank recently came onboard the President’s Challenge Enabling Employment Pledge, a national movement that aims to provide persons with disabilities with more employment opportunities.