Shaping the Next Generationof Banking Experiences
From affluent investors to everyday families, corporate treasurers to digital-first users, SCB needed a deeper understanding of how their services were (or weren’t) meeting the needs of real clients.
Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), one of the world’s oldest banks with operations spanning over 70 countries, engaged CraigWalker across multiple regions and business units to help address a series of complex, customer-facing challenges:
- Re-engaging affluent clients with investment products in Singapore
- Rethinking what family banking could mean across generations in Singapore
- Improving onboarding for corporate clients using SCB’s digital banking platform, S2B NextGen
- Understanding the real-world needs of Financial Markets clients in Mumbai
- Testing digital identity solutions with customers in the UAE
- Exploring opportunities in India’s growing healthcare sector
Each brief required a different lens. But the consistent challenge was to move beyond assumptions, deeply understand people and design solutions that would resonate in context.
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The project in numbers
6 Key business areas
1Perfect Services FX Platform Launched
30Strategic Plays Unlocked
Not Just Research, Real Conversations
Across projects spanning new market opportunities, wealth management, corporate banking, digital identity and family finance, CraigWalker prioritised real-world, in-context conversations with the people SCB serves. The team met clients where financial decisions actually happen: in homes, workplaces, service environments and bank branches. They spoke with people about the practical, emotional and cultural forces that shape their relationship with money. Our approach combined detailed conversation and contextual research with hands-on exploration. This included interviews, observations, co-design sessions, rapid discovery sprints and live prototype testing. In each case, a set of practical design tools was developed to help SCB teams reflect on findings, explore new ideas and carry the work forward. The insights uncovered became the foundation for new strategies, service concepts and a clearer understanding of the people SCB designs for.
Clarity, Creativity, Confidence
Each project gave SCB a clearer picture of its clients: what they need, what they value and how they experience the bank’s services in real life. In Singapore, insights from affluent customers inspired new ways of communicating investment content and identifying product opportunities. For corporate clients using the S2B NextGen platform, we helped shape a more effective onboarding experience and developed tools SCB teams could use in ongoing client conversations. In the UAE, usability testing of the digital identity solution revealed unexpected interaction patterns that led to more thoughtful, user-friendly design and improved adoption. In Mumbai, the Financial Markets team used our insights and service concepts to shape a new FX platform, now in market. In India’s healthcare sector, our research helped SCB identify strategic entry points into the hospital and insurance ecosystem, supporting the development of new sector-specific services. Across all projects, the work helped internal teams move forward with greater confidence, supported by a shared understanding of the customer, creative directions to explore and practical tools to act on.
