Artificial intelligence isn’t just another tool in the shed for Standard Chartered. It’s starting to look more like the engine that’s driving the whole car — and the bank is pressing down on the gas.
At a time when global banks are grappling with how to stay agile in a tech-driven economy, Standard Chartered is quietly stepping ahead, blending AI into the bloodstream of its operations. In Vietnam, one of its fastest-growing markets, the bank’s technology leadership is openly betting on GenAI not just to keep up, but to leap ahead.
From Buzzword to Backbone: AI as the Core Driver
Nguyen Ngoc Lan Anh, Chief Technology and Operations Officer at Standard Chartered Bank Vietnam, isn’t just throwing AI jargon around. She’s talking execution — real-time applications that are cutting through the bureaucracy banks are famous for.
AI, especially the generative kind, is becoming less of a “nice to have” and more of a daily necessity. No fluff here. It’s being used to cut customer response times, detect fraud faster, and generate internal knowledge resources that save staff hours.
One sentence says it all: “We’re no longer talking about pilots or experiments,” Lan Anh noted in a recent session. “We’re rolling it out in core operations.”
That’s a big deal for a bank that operates across some of the most regulation-heavy markets in the world.
Hyper-Personalisation: No More One-Size-Fits-All Banking
For years, digital banking meant logging into a clean app and checking your balance.
Now? That’s table stakes.
What Standard Chartered is chasing is real personalisation. Not the “Dear Mr. Pham” kind of personalisation. Real-time nudges, smarter financial advice, and custom investment tips based on your spending patterns, life stage, or even location.
Customers using the bank’s mobile apps in Vietnam are already seeing bits of this. According to sources familiar with the rollout, Standard Chartered is feeding customer data into AI models that can:
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Predict when a user might need a loan offer before they apply
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Suggest savings habits based on previous spending patterns
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Recommend financial products tied to travel or life goals
And it’s not just about the customer. Employees are being supported too, with AI copilots helping service teams write emails, respond to FAQs, and even monitor regulatory changes in the background.
Inside the Numbers: What CIOs Say About GenAI’s Future
There’s a data point from Gartner that puts all this in sharper focus. According to their 2025 CIO Agenda Report, investment in Generative AI is the top priority among surveyed tech leaders:
| Technology Investment Area | CIOs Planning Increases (2025) |
|---|---|
| Generative AI | 39% |
| Cybersecurity | 34% |
| AI (non-Gen) | 33% |
That’s not small change. It means banks aren’t just flirting with AI anymore — they’re marrying it.
And for Standard Chartered, that marriage is already yielding results. Lan Anh mentioned internal productivity gains that “would’ve taken 12 months manually are now showing up in weeks.”
Speed, Scale, and Smarts: How AI Changes the Operating Model
One major upside? AI helps Standard Chartered act like a fintech without having to become one.
Forget about clunky quarterly reviews. Decision cycles that used to be buried in spreadsheets and endless meetings are now being accelerated by AI-assisted insights. Risk assessments, fraud detection, and even anti-money laundering procedures — these are increasingly being handled by machine learning tools that spot anomalies in minutes.
What does that look like on the ground?
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Customers are onboarding faster.
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Credit decisions are being issued in hours, not days.
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Real-time alerts are reducing human error across compliance checks.
It’s the kind of operational rhythm that legacy banks have always struggled with — and tech-first startups always promised. Standard Chartered seems to be splitting the difference.
Not Just Vietnam: A Template for Global Expansion?
While the Vietnamese operation is front and center, it’s not a siloed experiment. Executives within the bank view this as a pilot for global deployment.
Markets like Singapore, India, and the UAE are watching closely. If the Vietnam playbook holds up, you can expect more AI-backed rollouts throughout Standard Chartered’s 60+ market footprint.
That’s no small ambition. But they’re not pretending this is easy.
Lan Anh admitted that regulation, legacy systems, and data privacy hurdles still make deployment uneven. But that hasn’t slowed the ambition — it’s just made the bank double down on training staff and tightening ethical guardrails.
AI’s Most Subtle Impact? Human Confidence
For all the talk about cost savings and speed, one of the least talked-about effects is also the most human.
Lan Anh said she’s seen something shift in the bank’s day-to-day environment. Junior staff are asking better questions. Senior leaders are spending more time thinking strategically, rather than getting buried in operational detail.
That’s the quiet magic of AI when done right — it doesn’t replace people. It frees them up to think.
Even customer-facing teams, usually bogged down with transactional work, are now feeling more engaged. “They have time to talk, really talk, to clients now,” she said.
And that’s something spreadsheets can’t measure.
