COO, Private Banking

Job Summary

• The COO, Private Bank is accountable for driving the bank’s strategic, operational, and transformation agenda to deliver sustainable growth, enhanced client outcomes, and operational excellence. Working closely with the Global Head of Affluent and WRB MT, the role shapes business strategy, strengthens competitive positioning, and ensures the operating model, platforms, and infrastructure are scalable, resilient, and future ready.
• The COO leads the development of forward-looking growth strategies aligned with market trends and regulatory requirements, oversees the design and continuous optimisation of operational capabilities, and ensures consistent global standards. The role is also responsible for delivering financial and operational performance across key metrics, advancing the simplification and efficiency agenda, and partnering across Wealth Solutions to execute a business-aligned infrastructure strategy, while playing a central role in annual planning, budgeting, and investment prioritisation.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy
• Define and execute a forward-looking operating strategy aligned to Private Bank growth ambitions, evolving client needs, and regulatory landscape.
• Lead the end-to-end transformation agenda, including simplification, digitisation, and operating model optimisation across global markets.
• Drive the digital and AI roadmap, embedding data, automation, and advanced analytics to enhance client experience, productivity, and frontline effectiveness.
• Oversee the design and modernisation of core platforms and infrastructure, ensuring scalability, resilience, and alignment to Group architecture.
• Sponsor and govern strategic change programmes, ensuring disciplined prioritisation, funding alignment, and measurable value realisation.

Business
• Act as a trusted risk partner to the business and PRT owners to enable commercial growth within a clear and disciplined risk framework.
• Own the end to end non-financial risk and controls framework for the Private Bank, with clear minimum standards across advisory, distribution, onboarding, and client servicing.
• Own delivery against financial and operational metrics, including productivity, efficiency, service levels, and operational risk outcomes

Processes
• Drive standardisation, simplification, and process optimisation across markets to improve scalability and reduce complexity
• Enable the business to launch and scale products efficiently, ensuring strong controls, robust processes, and alignment to platform capabilities.
• Leverage data, predictive analytics, and automation to continuously enhance operational performance and client outcomes.

People & Talent
• Lead and develop high-performing teams capable of supporting evolving business and regulatory demands.
• Ensuring talent on boarding and retention with succession plan in place for key roles and maintaining healthy bench-strength and leadership pipeline, and attrition management
• Ensuring framework for objective performance assessment of all team members
• Ensuring right skilling among team members and training /certification for specific roles
• Enabling a conducive environment for people including effective engagement
• Identifying and grooming talent pipeline

Risk Management
• Ensure there is a framework for effective management of operational risks across the Private Bank business and in compliance with applicable internal policies and external laws & regulations across our markets.
• Accountable for country roll-out and embedding of Operational Risk Framework linked to Private Bank business, ensure appropriate focus on High risk and Very High-risk issues.
• Responsible to minimize operational loss and audit failures and in conjunction with regional PvB COOs, ensure appropriate focus on issues and resolutions.
• Work with the relevant Risk Committees to ensure processes for wealth products are fit for purpose and meet regulatory requirements.
• As a member of the Private Bank Management Team, ensure that direct reports execute responsibilities as outlined in the Group Operational Risk Framework.
o maintaining a strong and appropriate control environment covering WRB businesses
o Restricting business if existing infrastructure and processes, capacity or capability are not fit to execute business within operational risk tolerance, regulatory standards or growth aspirations.
• Accountable to own regulatory audit / inspections on Private Bank teams in country / region as well as offshore service centres through direct reports. Represent the bank as appropriate to regulators.

Governance
• Establish strong governance over risk, controls, and issues, with clear accountability across the business.
• Provide clear, decision-ready reporting to senior management on risk exposure and control effectiveness.
• Oversee issue management, ensuring timely resolution and sustainable fixes.

Regulatory & Business Conduct
• Ensure alignment with internal policies and external regulatory requirements, including MAS, HKMA, FCA and equivalent local frameworks, through robust governance standards, assurance and ongoing control enhancement
• Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct.
• Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.
• Lead the Private Bank team to achieve the outcomes set out in the Bank’s Conduct Principles.
• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key stakeholders
• COO MT
• Private Banking MT
• Heads of Private Banking / Wealth Management
• Compliance, Operational Risk, Internal Audit and Conduct / Risk Committees
• Front Office Leadership, Relationship Managers, Investment Advisors, Product teams and Product Governance Committees

Skills and Experience

• Business Facilitation
• Manage Change
• Management of Frontline Risk
• Business Governance & Support
• Strategy & Business Model
• Service Delivery & Operations

Our Ideal Candidate

Education
• Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, economics, engineering or a related discipline.
Languages
• Business Communication & proficiency in one or more additional major languages (e.g. Mandarin) is desirable but not required
Others
• 15+ years of experience in private banking / wealth management
• Prior experience in private bank risk & controls, front office risk / advisory governance or a related wealth governance role is preferred, with a strong understanding of Asia private banking regulatory frameworks including MAS, HKMA, FCA or equivalent.

About Standard Chartered

We're an international bank, nimble enough to act, big enough for impact. For more than 170 years, we've worked to make a positive difference for our clients, communities, and each other. We question the status quo, love a challenge and enjoy finding new opportunities to grow and do better than before. If you're looking for a career with purpose and you want to work for a bank making a difference, we want to hear from you. You can count on us to celebrate your unique talents and we can't wait to see the talents you can bring us.

Our purpose, to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity, together with our brand promise, to be here for good are achieved by how we each live our valued behaviours. When you work with us, you'll see how we value difference and advocate inclusion.

Together we:

• Do the right thing and are assertive, challenge one another, and live with integrity, while putting the client at the heart of what we do
• Never settle, continuously striving to improve and innovate, keeping things simple and learning from doing well, and not so well
• Are better together, we can be ourselves, be inclusive, see more good in others, and work collectively to build for the long term

What we offer

In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.

• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and all sorts of self-help toolkits
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual and digital learning.
• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions and geographies - everyone feels respected and can realise their full potential.