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SC's Judy Hsu on Korea's growing wealth management sector and the importance of long term relationships

Published: 21 Nov. 2025, 18:49

Judy Hsu, CEO of Standard Chartered bank's wealth and retail banking and greater China and north Asia [STANDARD CHARTERED]

[INTERVIEW]

Korea’s wealth management (WM) sector is booming. According to the Korea Financial Investment Association, the domestic WM market grew 8.2 percent from 2.9 quadrillion won ($1.96 trillion) in the first half of 2023 to 3.13 quadrillion won in the same period in 2024.

The growth is particularly pronounced in services targeting high net worth individuals (HNWIs). As of last year, clients holding more than 1 billion won in financial assets accounted for 2.82 quadrillion won — or 58.6 percent — of the country’s total financial assets of 4.88 quadrillion won.

Standard Chartered (SC) Bank Korea, the only foreign retail bank operating in the country, has focused on this strategy, posting 271.4 billion won in cumulative noninterest income in the first three quarters of this year on the back of strong performance in its WM business. The figure marks a 13 percent increase from the same period last year.

In an interview on Friday with the JoongAng Sunday, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, Judy Hsu, CEO, Wealth and Retail Banking and Greater China & North Asia at Standard Chartered, said SC Bank Korea’s strength lies in meeting the needs of HNWIs by leveraging the global network and expertise of its British parent company. SC entered the Korean market in 2005 through the acquisition of the Korea First Bank, or Jeil Bank, and is now marking nearly 20 years of operations in the country.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Standard Chartered bank logo is seen at its London headquarters on July 26, 2022. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Q. The role of banks in the WM market, distinct from securities firms, has become more important. What are your thoughts on this?

A. When somebody opens a bank account they usually keep it for 20 to 30 years. So that long history of trust — a relationship — and the bank's ability to understand the client needs is quite an important part of the bank's ability to extend from just doing basic banking to now advisory, which is what WM is about. WM is not just about selling a stock or a bond or a fund. Our focus is really understanding the client's needs, their financial objectives and their risk tolerance [...] and then providing a holistic platform of products and services to meet those needs. Security houses in Korea clearly have strong capabilities in equities and more trading. What banks really do is much deeper in terms of building up deeper trust, a long-term relationship and we bring balance sheet strength.

The proportion of HNWIs in the WM market is growing. What are their main interests and investment trends?

Transition investing refers to funds that invest in companies who are trying to grow increasingly green or reduce their emissions. So, we have a very broad range of products that support clients who want to really participate in that — the transition, or investing in the infrastructure for more renewable energy. I would have to say that SC is a real leading player in transition financing — in really supporting our clients in reducing their emissions. It's because of the trend, with what's happened in the amount of energy that now the world needs. And the only way to generate that is find new source of energy. Globally, we have sustainable deposits where the deposit is only used to support green energy, renewable energy or transition or other more sustainable type of investments.

Judy Hsu, CEO of Standard Chartered bank's wealth and retail banking and greater China and north Asia [STANDARD CHARTERED]

What sets SC’s WM business apart?

We have four big wealth hubs, which is Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates [UAE] and Jersey. Banks play a very key role. So, our relationship managers here are that window to the world. We want to make sure that our relationship manager here understands the clients and their need in terms of their global or their international objectives.

How does the global network function?

I think increasingly Koreans are becoming very international — they send their children overseas, they travel or immigrate. Then potentially, let’s say a Korean family is moving overseas for its children's education and they want to buy a property in Britain. Our relationship managers here can then refer our clients to our colleague in Britain and we can offer a British mortgage or understand the British residential property market or we can help them to understand some of the educational needs.

As a bank, we are called a ‘super connector.’ You know all our teams either in Korea, in Hong Kong, in China, everyone is linked to the global network in terms of understanding what we could do to bring our network to our clients.

SC has launched a private banking center in Korea under the name Priority Private in Apgujeong in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Thursday. How does this differ from the services offered to HNWIs by other local banks?

We have sixteen Priority Private centers globally, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, the UAE, India and China, and this is the seventh Priority Private center. Ultimately, as I said, our job is to build that long-term relationship and really be able to help our clients, and create and construct a portfolio that suits their risk profile. We have 23 relationship managers that will be supporting our clients and they're all trained by our SC-Insead Wealth Academy so that they are able to bring this strong platform and products and advice to our clients.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY LEE CHANG-KYUN [[email protected]]