Standard Chartered’s 2025 profit jumps 16% buoyed by wealth management growth

Standard Chartered Bank, one of Hong Kong’s three note-issuing banks, reported a 16 per cent profit jump for 2025, as strong wealth management growth helped it weather rising bad debt from the city’s commercial real estate slump. The London-based bank, which generates much of its revenue from Asia, reported an underlying pre-tax profit of US$7.9 billion last year, compared with US$6.8 billion in 2024, the bank said in a stock exchange filing on Tuesday. Underlying earnings per share stood at US$2.297. This matched analysts’ estimate of US$7.9 billion. It proposed a 49 US cents final dividend, bringing the total for 2025 to 61 US cents. A year earlier it paid 37 US cents. The bank said it would set aside US$1.5 billion to buy back shares this year, after spending US$1.5 billion on buy-backs last year. “We have made a good start to the year and continue to benefit from a supportive business environment,” CEO Bill Winters said in the exchange statement. “We are seeing robust growth in our larger markets, and structural shifts in global trade and investment play to our distinctive strengths serving our clients’ cross-border and affluent banking needs.” The bank’s shares jumped 1.3 per cent to HK$194.5 on Tuesday morning before the earnings announcement. Hong Kong remains Standard Chartered’s biggest market, with its pre-tax profit in the city jumping 40 per cent to US$2.66 billion, representing 34 per cent of the total. But Hong Kong’s property slump also meant that the bank had to contend with a higher level of bad debt. Standard Chartered’s bad debt charge increased 21 per cent to US$676 million, which includes a US$253 million in Hong Kong and a US$78 million exposure to mainland China, covering bad debt commercial real estate, as well as defaults on credit card and personal loans. “We continued to de-risk in China and Hong Kong commercial real estate, and have limited exposures to US regional banks and insurance companies,” the lender’s statement said. The lender, however, benefited from the strong growth of its wealth management business, which expanded 24 per cent to a record US$3.09 billion, compared with US$2.49 billion a year earlier. Standard Chartered said it added 275,000 new affluent clients in 2025, with net new affluent money under management rising to US$52 billion during the year, bringing the total to US$447 billion as at the end of 2025. The bank’s net interest margin, an important measure of profitability, narrowed to 2.03 per cent at the end of December 2025, compared with 2.06 per cent a year earlier. Net interest income rose 1 per cent to US$11.18 billion in 2025, compared with US$11.09 billion in 2024. Operating income, which is equivalent to revenue in US accounting terms, rose 6 per cent to US$20.89 billion in 2025, from US$19.7 billion a year earlier based on constant currency exchange rates. Its digital banking business continued to report losses. SC Ventures’ underlying pre-tax loss stood at US$167 million in 2025, narrowing from a loss of US$385 million in 2024. The segment includes its majority-owned virtual banks Mox in Hong Kong and Trust in Singapore. For the fourth quarter alone, Standard Chartered’s underlying pre-tax profit rose 20 per cent to US$1.2 billion, from US$1 billion a year earlier.