Standard Chartered Unveils Expansion Plan

Leading international banking group, Standard Chartered has updated investors at its inaugural Africa Investor Day on the group’s aspirations for the region.

The group says it will invest over $100million on 110 new branches in Kenya,Ghana and, Nigeria alongside five other core markets over the next three years, as well as making substantial hires across both the Wholesale and Consumer Banking business,including over 900 sales staff in the Consumer Banking business.

At a conference, Diana Layfield, Standard Chartered’s CEO for Africa, set out her vision for the African franchise over the next five years against a back drop of how far the business has fared to date.

Even allowing for increasing competition from both international and local banks, Diana Layfield said the group aims to maintain the CAGR delivered over the last five years of 16 percent.

According to her, this will see revenues from the African business more than double in size over the next four to five years on a constant currency basis, while delivering on the groups target average.

She further explained that investment spend will also be accelerated in mobile payments technology, physical infrastructure, staff hires,establishing new onshore presences and deepening existing ones.

Standard Chartered currently covers 37 markets in the region–15 on a full presence basis and 22 further markets on a transaction basis following its clients; providing extensive reach across the continent, thereby covering 92% of sub-Saharan African GDP.

Speaking further, she said: “The group will expand its geographic reach to establish new onshore presences and deepening existing ones. It intends to open new wholesale Banking office locations in South Africa and invest in new products in both Islamic banking and Mortgages, as well as establishing an onshore presence in Mozambique.

“At $1.34billion in 2011, Africa currently accounts for 8% of the group income. As with the group as a whole, our performance has been sustained by a large number of different growth engines with a very healthy balance across our major geographies.

“This is a business which is enormously well-positioned. We see a real opportunity to capture a larger share of the increasing‘ south-south’ trade links between Africa and Asian countries including India, China and South Korea. As Africa becomes more globalised, very few banks have a Pan African footprint that is integrated fully with a global  network.”

—Henry Ojelu