Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) Philippines has been investing to enhance its digital infrastructure in a bid to provide better customer experience, especially at a time when most transactions are accomplished online.
The bank said in a statement last Monday that it is on track with its digital innovation strategy, which is aimed at delivering convenience and security to online banking transactions.
“The banking industry has been going through digital acceleration to meet the evolving requirements of our clients,” SCB Philippines Chief Executive Officer Lynette V. Ortiz said. “Over the years, the bank has invested heavily on digital infrastructure to support this shift, and to enable us to deliver better, more secure and user-friendly capabilities to our clients.”
Recently, SCB launched Straight2Bank Foreign Exchange (FX), which is an integrated FX payment service included in the payment processing workflow.
The bank said payment can be done from a single centralized account and settled across over 15 payment currencies, making it an “efficient option” for FX settlement.
The bank also has implemented a digital upgrade that “offers a wide range of technical and functional capabilities which includes standardization across its markets, an enhanced user interface and additional interest pricing options, among others.”
In addition, SCB said it was currently working on a digital infrastructure to host its core banking application in a public cloud.
This month, Union Bank of the Philippines, along with SCB, completed a retail bond offering via a digital platform using blockchain technology for bond tokenization.
SCB said that the digital solution was aimed at providing retail investors a secure and direct access to bonds.
“The bond infrastructure around the world has been designed primarily for institutional investors and involves a number of intermediaries to buy and subsequently trade bonds, making it less accessible to retail investors. To an average investor, providing direct access to issuers is critical in allowing them to reap the full benefits of their investment,” said Aaron Gwak, SCB Head of Capital Markets, ASEAN.
The dual-tranche transaction raised P9 billion at the end of offer period. The bond offering, which has an original issue size of P3 billion, includes three-year and 5.25-year securities with interest rates of 2.75 percent and 3.375 percent, respectively.