Overview:
- Client lifecycle management aims to streamline onboarding by enhancing both client and internal user experiences.
- Financial sponsors demand rapid onboarding across 50+ jurisdictions, prompting a push for simplification and standardisation.
- Technology investment focuses on end-to-end orchestration, enabling SLA tracking and proactive relationship manager intervention.
- Customer satisfaction and process efficiency are key metrics, with up to 45% of onboarding steps targeted for elimination.
- Upfront data usage enables parallel processing, reducing turnaround time by up to 95% in advanced markets.
Standard Chartered is reengineering its client onboarding process to meet the growing demand for speed and simplicity from financial sponsors, who often require onboarding within just three days. The bank is investing heavily in technology and data orchestration to streamline operations across more than 50 jurisdictions, aiming to eliminate nearly half of the current process steps.
The challenge is clear: financial sponsors, such as private equity firms, want to deploy capital quickly and expect banks to match their pace. Relationship managers at Standard Chartered are under pressure to deliver rapid onboarding while navigating complex regulatory requirements. “We need to simplify and really understand the financial sponsor’s requirements,” Paul Carty, Program Director at Standard Chartered, told BackgroundBriefing.news.
Technology as the Backbone of Transformation
To meet these demands, Standard Chartered is reimagining its end-to-end onboarding process. Instead of relying on fragmented systems, the bank is implementing technology that orchestrates the entire journey. This allows relationship managers to track progress, intervene when needed, and provide clients with clear service-level expectations.
“We are orchestrating across that end-to-end journey. You can see exactly where you are and where you can intervene,” Carty told BackgroundBriefing.news.
The bank’s internal systems will now support parallel processing, particularly in risk assessment and client due diligence. This shift from sequential workflows is expected to significantly reduce turnaround times.
Data-Driven Efficiency Gains
Central to the transformation is the use of upfront data. By validating and stamping data early in the lifecycle, Standard Chartered can eliminate redundant steps and accelerate onboarding. In advanced markets where data is readily available, turnaround times could improve by up to 95%. In less developed data environments, gains of around 30% are still expected.
Customer satisfaction remains a key metric. While clients appreciate the bank’s relationship managers, they often criticize the onboarding process. The goal is to maintain strong human connections while leveraging technology to reduce friction.
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About the speaker:
Paul Carty
Program Director
Standard Chartered
Paul Carty, Program Director at Standard Chartered, is a seasoned technology leader based in Singapore. With a career spanning over two decades across global financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, Deloitte, ANZ, and Merrill Lynch, Paul has led transformative programs in client lifecycle management, digital banking, and enterprise architecture. His expertise lies in bridging business and technology, delivering strategic outcomes through visionary leadership and high-performing teams.
Paul’s career reflects a consistent focus on aligning technology with business goals, mentoring teams, and driving innovation. His credentials include a Bachelor of Applied Science from Trinity College Dublin and certifications such as PMP and AWS Technical Accreditation.
FAQs:
What is client lifecycle management at Standard Chartered?
Client lifecycle management refers to how Standard Chartered brings clients onboard, simplifies their experience, and streamlines internal processes while maintaining regulatory compliance.
Why is onboarding speed critical for financial sponsors?
Financial sponsors, such as private equity firms, often need to deploy funds quickly and expect onboarding to be completed within two to three days across multiple jurisdictions.
What challenges do relationship managers face during onboarding?
Relationship managers struggle with meeting tight deadlines due to complex processes and regulatory requirements, making rapid onboarding difficult under current systems.
How is Standard Chartered using technology to improve onboarding?
The bank is implementing end-to-end orchestration technology that connects fragmented systems, enabling SLA tracking and real-time visibility for relationship managers.
What role does data play in the onboarding transformation?
Upfront data validation allows Standard Chartered to eliminate redundant steps, parallelize processes, and reduce turnaround time significantly—up to 95% in advanced markets.
How does Standard Chartered measure success in onboarding improvements?
Key metrics include customer satisfaction and process efficiency, with a target to eliminate up to 45% of onboarding steps across different markets.
What feedback has Standard Chartered received from clients?
Clients appreciate the bank’s relationship managers but often criticize the onboarding process, prompting efforts to improve it through technology and simplification.
Can onboarding steps be parallelized instead of done sequentially?
Yes, by leveraging trusted data sources early, Standard Chartered can parallelize risk assessment and due diligence steps, speeding up the overall process.
What is the expected impact of these changes in less data-rich markets?
In markets with limited data availability, Standard Chartered expects onboarding improvements of around 30%, still a significant efficiency gain.
How many jurisdictions does Standard Chartered operate in for onboarding?
Standard Chartered supports onboarding across more than 50 jurisdictions, requiring standardized processes and localized expertise.
5W1H summary:
| Category | Summary Points |
|---|---|
| What |
1. Onboarding process transformation 2. Faster client lifecycle management 3. End-to-end tech orchestration |
| How |
1. Use upfront trusted data 2. Parallelize KYC steps 3. Eliminate redundant processes |
| Why |
1. Meet 3-day SLA demand 2. Improve client satisfaction 3. Reduce regulatory delays |
| Who |
1. Financial sponsors clients 2. Relationship managers 3. Standard Chartered program team |
| Where |
1. Singapore headquarters 2. Across 50+ jurisdictions 3. ASEAN and global markets |
| When |
1. During onboarding requests 2. Within 2–3 day SLA 3. As tech rollout progresses |
Transcript of the interview:
Client life cycle management is all about how we bring our clients on board. How we make sure that those experiences are simple and straightforward and how we simplify the experience from an internal perspective as well.
The key things we are looking at are our client and user experience, our data, and clearly making sure that we continue to be risk aware and regulatory aware. What does that actually mean for us?
From a client experience perspective, I often tell the story about some of our financial sponsors clients. Financial sponsorship is really when you have a group of people, potentially private equity, who are looking to support an investment manager or an asset manager to release funds into the marketplace.
Typically what they want to be able to do is to release this pretty quickly. They are looking at a two to three day turnaround typically.
Imagine you are a financial sponsor, or more importantly, that you are a relationship manager sitting at Standard Chartered. A financial sponsor comes to you and says, “We want your specific expertise across the 50 plus jurisdictions that you are engaged across.”
“We need your language capabilities, we need the in-country expertise, but we need you to onboard in three days.” You as a relationship manager today at Standard Chartered are going to sit there and go, “Oh my god, how am I going to do this?”
I know for a fact that is going to take you longer than three days just because of the current set of processes and potentially even regulatory items that you need to go through. What are we going to do about that as we go forward from a Standard Chartered perspective and what is my role as program director going to help with that?
We are after how we simplify and really understand the financial sponsor’s requirements, what they are looking to get, and when they are looking to get it. What do we then need to do from an internal standpoint to simplify that, to standardize across our 50 plus jurisdictions?
We get to a point of being able to say I understand the data that is required, I understand the processes that are required, and I am able to meet that requirement of three days turnaround time. Those are the key things that we are looking at as part of the client onboarding journey.
I heard from one of your colleagues, maybe you even know Tom, he was telling me that there was actually quite a lot of investment going into the technology. What actually are you bringing to the fore here?
From a technology perspective, it is really reimagining and rethinking how we look at the end to end process. In a lot of cases, we have very specific technology that looks at particular parts of the process, but joining that up end to end is how we think we are going to change the way we onboard and simplify that journey.
That will allow us, from a client experience perspective, to be able to say to a client: the SLA that we expect to be able to handle your onboarding request is X. You will see the progress across that SLA as we go through that.
From an internal standpoint, the technology we are implementing means that we are orchestrating across that end-to-end journey. You as a relationship manager dealing with your financial sponsor can see exactly where you are in that journey end to end.
You know where you can intervene and help to speed things along, or whether there are further requests for information coming back for our clients.
And ultimately, how will you measure all of this effort?
There are a couple of key measurements. One of the key measurements we are looking at is customer satisfaction.
As we go out to our clients, one of the things we hear is that they hate our process, but they love our relationship managers. Our people-to-people interaction is one of our selling points.
I think our network and our ability to satisfy our customer requirements from a people perspective is great. What we want to do is simplify that so that we do not have to just rely on people.
We can also rely on the technology to support those people better as we go forward. It is looking at that end-to-end process and what are the steps in that process that we can get rid of and completely eliminate.
We are looking at upwards of 45% of the process steps that we believe we can eliminate as we look at different markets. This comes back to the data point.
When I talked about data before, I said that we were looking to bring our data up front. By doing that, we can stamp and trust our data further down the life cycle.
That means I do not have to do re-evaluation of that data as we go through, and that allows us to then eliminate those steps as we go through the other parts of the process. It also allows me to parallelize a lot of the process steps.
Rather than the way we do it today, which is in sequence, I can parallelize a number of steps in the risk assessment part of our KYC and client due diligence. This reduces that turnaround time.
Depending on where data is freely available or publicly available or even through bot sources, this is going to lead to results. We probably look at somewhere between 30% for some of those countries where the data is maybe not so readily available and we have to reach out to the client for that information.
This is up to 95% for those advanced markets where the data is available, it is on the platform, and we can bring it in, interrogate that, and use that in our onboarding experience.