With AI being a major technological theme influencing wealth management and private banking, UK-listed Standard Chartered has minted a new role that covers this area.

Standard Chartered has created the newly-formed role of “global head, wealth and retail banking data, analytics and AI,” highlighting how developing artificial intelligence is continuing to be a hot theme for business.

The bank has appointed former HSBC senior figure Yusuf Demiral to the position. In this role, he will lead Standard Chartered’s strategy across the end-to-end client journey, working with marketing, digital sales and client experience teams to deliver the overall strategy of the chief client office.

Demiral, who has more than 25 years of banking experience, was most recently group head of data analytics and customer relationship management for wealth and personal banking at HSBC. He was responsible for managing data platforms, advanced analytics and CRM capabilities for HSBC’s retail and wealth banking operations across products, segments and channels.

Based in Hong Kong and joining the UK-listed bank on 7 July, Demiral will report to Samir Subberwal, global head, wealth solutions, deposits and mortgages, and chief client office.

The appointment comes at a time when banks and other financial institutions are continuing to explore AI use cases (see an article here), as well as extracting value from data. AI capabilities include credit scoring and risk assessment; fraud detection and prevention; chatbots and virtual assistants; personalised banking and financial planning; algorithmic trading; customer relationship management; regulatory compliance; robo-advisors; and natural language processing (NLP). The recent rise of generative AI has sent shockwaves through financial services. (This news service mused on the implications here.) 

At the start of this year, Lloyds Banking Group said it had appointed Magdalena Lis as head of responsible artificial intelligence. In the US, Morgan Stanley promoted Jeff McMillan to be its first head of firm-wide AI. AI is upending certain parts of banking, bringing changes including cuts to certain roles. In February, DBS reportedly (BBC, other media) said it expects to shed about 4,000 roles over the next three years as AI replaces certain human tasks. A report from NTT Data in February this year said that cost cutting appears to be the most popular reason for the world’s financial institutions embracing generative AI, although enhancing the client experience and gaining a competitive edge are also strong motivators.