The bank is rolling out a service allowing affluent clients to put ideas to work rapidly to seize market opportunities, tapping bank ideas and the power of automated systems.

Standard Chartered has launched a wealth management tool that allows clients to tailor-make investment ideas in minutes, an innovation it claims is the first of its kind in Asia. 

Known as Personalised Investment Ideas, the offering is pitched at Priority Banking clients so they can respond more rapidly than before to market opportunities, deploying automated investment ideas based on considerations such as a client’s risk profile and the bank’s market views. 

The service has gone live in Singapore; Standard Chartered plans to introduce it into other Asian markets, it said in a statement. 

Personalised Investment Ideas is available on a relationship manager’s tablet-based sales-and-service device. The service generates and gives priorities to investment ideas for funds and bonds, tailored for each client. Following a conversation with their RM, a client is emailed a report with suggestions for buy/sell/hold, backed by a set of reasons. The RM will also advise clients on the suitability of a product based on their needs and objectives and help them to act on their chosen idea.

The service can be viewed in some ways as an example of “hybrid” wealth management, taking elements of automated, “robo” processes and combining these with personal, human interaction at the outset of a client/RM conversation. Recent years have seen a flurry of interest around so-called robo-advisors, which use automated systems to calculate, for example, how a portfolio should be set up after information about risk appetite and other points are fed in. 

A number of banks, such as UBS with its SmartWealth offering, have invested in, or developed, robo-advisory models of their own to avoid being overtaken by industry upstarts.

DBS, the Singapore-headquartered bank, for example, has worked with IBM’s Watson cognitive computing team to develop new services harnessing such ideas. The ascent of e-commerce players such as Google and Alibaba has also prompted thoughts of how they could push into finance; Alibaba, for example, already has its own wealth management brand in China, Ant Financial.

“Our clients want banking to be easy, just a few clicks on their smartphones. But for bigger decisions, like investing large sums of money, they often want to speak to an expert as well,” Karen Fawcett, chief executive of retail banking and group head of brand and marketing, said. 

Recent launches by Standard Chartered include virtual access to investment advisors via video banking, online and mobile access to mutual funds, market information optimised for mobile, as well as mobile FX trading services.