Standard Chartered Malaysia’s Plaza Arkadia branch exemplifies the localisation efforts of the bank in adapting to the needs of local communities.
EVER wished that your bank was open after work hours, so you can easily settle your banking matters?
Well, if you are a Desa Park City (DPC) KL resident, you’re in luck. Standard Chartered Malaysia has gone above and beyond to offer its services for all your banking needs, outside the traditional banking hours of 8.45am to 4pm from Mondays to Fridays.
What it means is that the branch, which opened in October last year, has adjusted its opening to 11am, while also extending its operational hours to 7pm from Mondays to Saturdays.
Standard Chartered Malaysia’s Plaza Arkadia branch welcomes its customers to bring along their pets when performing banking transactions.
It had been barely two weeks after the Plaza Arkadia branch first opened its doors that the decision was made, in order to provide further convenience and cater to the needs of DPC’s community.
“That’s a change we made very quickly after realising the kind of footfall we’re seeing and the lifestyle of residents living in the area,” said Standard Chartered Malaysia managing director and consumer, private and business banking head Sammeer.
In doing so, it not only demonstrates the bank’s continued commitment to drive commerce and prosperity through a culture of inclusion, but also its determination to assimilate into the lifestyles of the local community by providing a holistic proposition based on their needs.
“When we chose this location, we went around to try and understand the DPC community and lifestyle, to see the relevance and added value we can bring to them, besides just providing banking solutions,” he explained.
Part of the community
Aside from that, Standard Chartered Malaysia’s Plaza Arkadia branch is also the bank’s first pet-friendly branch.
Customers are now welcome to bring along their pets when performing their banking transactions.
A lot of deliberation went into planning this launch, including intensive discussions on the health, hygiene and safety aspects, such as ensuring the usage of cleaning equipment that are non-toxic to pets.
Being a part of the community also means active participation in and support for community events such as a Halloween trick-or-treat event.
Standard Chartered Malaysia consumer, private and business banking head and managing director Sammeer
Innovation to stay ahead
This hyperlocalisation approach ties into the bank’s philosophy of being innovative, disruptive and open to new ideas – built on the back of learnings accumulated from its experience operating in Malaysia, as well as its strong presence and on-ground knowledge across all 10 Asean markets.
“The good thing about Standard Chartered is that although we’re among the first banks in the country, we’re an organisation that is very innovative. We made a strategic decision that we’d rather disrupt ourselves than be disrupted,” said Sammeer.
“Despite being 148 years old in Malaysia, we have a challenger mindset. We protect and grow our existing business, but we are also fearless when it comes to innovation.”
The reason for constant innovation is to stay ahead of the curve and keep moving forward, Sammeer pointed out, which is why the bank embraces the latest technologies to build and offer new capabilities that enable it to acquire and serve clients cost efficiently and at scale.
Owing to the affluent demographic in DPC, the branch provides solutions specifically catered to such customers.
These include being the first bank in Malaysia to offer SmartDirect, a platform whereby customers can transact in over 200 mutual funds of various currencies, as well as a real-time foreign exchange conversion platform LiveFX.
It also launched SmartStocks, a one-stop online share trading platform that enables customers to trade on 12 exchanges across seven global markets, on any web-enabled or smart device.
Most recently, it has also introduced SC Remit, which is able to offer the community a seamless way to transfer money overseas, as part of the bank’s international banking proposition.
Being a part of the community means active participation in, and support for, community events such as a Halloween trick-or-treat event.
Seamless customer journey
To provide its customers with best-in-class products and services, the bank is focusing on building and leveraging on partnerships.
“The idea is to keep innovating and finding ways to engage customers in the most friction-free way possible by being closer to them.
“Customers are accessing products and solutions in different ways, be it ecommerce or ewallets, so the intent is to be more invisible and visible by embedding ourselves in the platforms customers are already present in,” Sammeer explained, adding that Standard Chartered was one of the first banks in the country to support Apple Pay.
Appreciating diversity and inclusion aspects, he noted that the bank wants to ensure that it is part of the communities it operates in by supporting and offering its customers banking solutions that fit well into their lifestyles.
For the DPC residents in particular, this means leveraging its core strengths to deliver solutions that serve both the individual wealth management and business needs of its customers.
“Given our presence in markets with almost 100 million affluent individuals, Standard Chartered is in a privileged and unique position to help our affluent clients grow and protect their wealth.
“Building on this, our strategy for the next five years is to continue leveraging our open-architecture model to source and offer the best-in-class products to our clients, while continuing to digitise our distribution network to offer cutting-edge user experience,” Sammer concluded.
