The British bank reported its first loss in 26 years after facing headwinds from restructuring costs and market volatilities.

Standard Chartered suffered a pre-tax loss of $1.5 billion in 2015 – its first annual loss since 1989 – at the hands of challenging market conditions and restructuring charges of $1.8 billion.

The emerging markets-focused bank reported a 15 per cent per cent year-on-year fall in income to $15.4 billion and an 84 per cent plunge in underlying pre-tax profit to $800 million. It attributed the “poor” performance to lower commodity prices, muted trade volumes, stock market volatility, and emerging market currency weakness against the US dollar.

In November last year, chief executive Bill Winters, who took the helm in June, announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs by 2018 and raised £3.3 billion ($5.1 billion) in capital to help create a “lean, focused and well capitalised international bank”.

Following the latest results statement, shares in the bank fell as much as 12 per cent before recovering to be down 5.4 per cent in mid-morning London trading.

"While 2015 performance was poor, the actions we took on capital throughout last year and in particular in December have positioned us strongly for the current macro environment. We have a balance sheet that is resilient and we are in the right markets. We have identified our risk issues, and we are dealing with them assertively,” Winters said in the statement on the London Stock Exchange.

Income from Standard Chartered's private banking clients was down nine per cent at $557 million and the lender saw weaker demand for its wealth management products, most notably in Hong Kong and Singapore during the second half of the year. Its wealth management income rose a marginal two per cent over the year to $1.7 billion as strong growth in the first half was largely offset by slower momentum in the second half.

“The challenging external environment is not an excuse for our performance. We are not unwitting victims. Rather, the external challenges increase our urgent need to take all necessary steps to address the structural and operational issues we have identified as critical to improving returns,” Winters said.

In a conference call, reported by news media, Winters said the bank had launched a number of accountability reviews which could lead to it taking back payments made to some senior executives if they are found at fault for a rise in bad loans.

"(The bank's) executive directors have already paid a price for our underperformance," Winters was quoted as saying. He referred to a decision not to award bonuses to executive directors this year and the expiry at zero value of a 2013 performance-linked incentive programme.