REUTERS SUMMIT-StanChart to consider onshore private bank in China next year

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By Saeed Azhar and Sumeet Chatterjee

SINGAPORE/HONG KONG, June 14 (Reuters) - British bank Standard Chartered PLC (HKSE: 2888.HK - news) will consider next year whether it should start an onshore private bank in China, as the world's second-biggest economy continues to open up, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

"In 2017, we'll look at it again, see what the market looks like and how are we executing on other priorities and then decide," Anna Marrs, Standard Chartered's global head of commercial and private banking client segments, told the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Singapore.

"Compared with the rest of the world, it's huge so you can't ignore it. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) 's just figuring out the right time and the right scale and making sure we're getting our priorities across all centres."

If Standard Chartered sets up a private bank in China, it would compete with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS-PB - news) and UBS (LSE: 0QNR.L - news) on advising wealthy clients in the local market.

Standard Chartered has a retail, corporate and priority banking business located in China that enables it to refer wealthier clients to the offshore private bank, industry watchers say.

Regulatory restrictions and a relatively less developed capital market have restricted some of the global banks in setting up onshore private banking presence to tap one of the world's fastest growing centres for millionaires.

An offshore business remains the preferred route of many international wealth management firms who want to tap into the millionaires spawned by China's booming technology sector and its soaring stock market.

Still, many global private banks have put Asia at the centre of their growth strategy, hiring thousands of people and tapping new customer segments in a region expected to soon boast more billionaires than the United States.

Standard Chartered Chief Executive Bill Winters said in his presentation last year the bank had pinpointed private banking and wealth management as businesses to invest in, saying he wanted to grow assets under management by $25 billion by 2018.

Marrs said the biggest contributions to that growth would come from Singapore and Hong Kong, but the bank also expects to grow its business in Africa in countries including Nigeria.

In 2015, Standard Chartered's wealth management assets grew 5 percent to $69 billion, while its private banking assets under management fell 2 percent to $57 billion, according to the bank's annual filings.

Standard Chartered is eyeing 12-15 percent return on equity from its wealth business by the end of 2018, Marrs said. She (Munich: SOQ.MU - news) said the bank would invest $250 million in a private banking system to help automate processes in its six key markets.

Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter (Swiss: TWTR.SW - news) @Reuters_Summits (Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Denny Thomas in HONG KONG, and Saeed Azhar and Marius Zaharia in SINGAPORE; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Louise Heavens)