Standard Chartered’s earnings rise 10% as wealth administration enterprise booms | USAEMALL.com

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Standard Chartered increased profits in the first quarter on the back of higher wealth management income, although the bank warned about the coming impact of US President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The Asia-focused lender reported pre-tax profits of $2.1bn for the first three months of 2025, 10 per cent higher than the same period a year earlier and beating analyst forecasts that profits would be flat.

StanChart’s return on tangible equity — a measure of profitability — increased by 1.3 percentage points to 14.8 per cent.

But Bill Winters, group chief executive and the longest-serving UK banking chief, warned the impact of US trade tariffs on clients was still ahead.

“Imposition of trade tariffs has increased global economic and geopolitical complexity, and we remain watchful of the external environment,” he said in a statement on Friday.

The bank increased its risk-management probability of an intensified global trade war from 10 to 15 per cent — a scenario that it models would result in five years of below 1 per cent average annual GDP growth for the US and China — and raised its credit provisioning for such a scenario by $23mn to $66mn.

“The current state of uncertainty [comes] after decades of globalisation, after decades of economies getting more and more intertwined,” said Diego De Giorgi, group chief financial officer.

“The ultimate result might very well be a more complex and more fragmented world, but it cannot be a world where the shutters come down between every country,” he cautioned.

Underlying net interest income, which the bank tweaked to include income from foreign exchange swaps, increased in the first three months by 7 per cent year on year to $2.8bn at constant exchange rates.

The other key driver of increased income at the bank was its wealth management division, which boosted operating income by 28 per cent on a constant currency basis, as customers piled into cross-border investment products and bancassurance.

“Our ability to help clients manage their business and wealth across borders in times of volatility reinforces our confidence that we can continue to improve returns,” said Winters.

Last year, StanChart said it planned to double investment in its wealth management business, shifting its focus towards affluent individuals and global institutions and away from smaller domestic businesses and retail clients.

De Giorgi said the bank was targeting affluent expatriates and wealthy individuals, including “global Indians and global Chinese”. He added that clients of its wealth management business had turned towards “more defensive” investment products in April as the US imposed sweeping tariffs on the rest of the world.

He said he was “optimistic” about the Chinese real estate market and Hong Kong following stimulus measures taken by Beijing. StanChart maintains a credit overlay of $73mn for its exposure to Chinese commercial real estate and $47mn for clients with exposure to the Hong Kong sector.

“The continued effort by the Chinese authorities to stimulate the economy, an effort that is likely to continue and increase . . . both on the monetary and increasingly on the fiscal side, will continue to support the Hong Kong economy,” said De Giorgi.

Additional reporting by Ortenca Aliaj in London