Standard Chartered Private Bank has bolstered its Southeast Asia team with the hires of Kapil Poply and Guarav Gupta, according to a statement from the firm.
Poply joins the bank as managing director and senior client partner for the global South Asia community team (GSAC), while Gupta joins as an executive director and relationship manager for GSAC. Both are based in Singapore and report to Ravi Ramakrishnan, managing director and market head for GSAC.
Poply and Gupta both were at UOB Private Bank. Poply has 20 years of banking experience and was a senior team head at UOB PB, where he led a team covering Southeast Asia and Midde East and Africa. Before that, he held senior banker positions in Singapore and India with ANZ, ING, UBS and Citi, according to the statement.
Meanwhile, Gupta has 15 years of experience managing ultra high net worth individuals who are largely non-resident Indians (NRI) across the Middle East and Southeast Asia markets. He was most recently a senior client advisor at UOB PB and before that was with ANZ.
“These hires are aligned with our private bank’s hiring strategy,” the statement said.
The hires also follow the appointment of Adeline Lai last week as Singapore-based executive director. She reports to Gavin Chia, market head of Southeast Asia for private banking.
Lai will be focusing on the Southeast Asian markets, with a focus on Singapore and Malaysia, according to a Singapore-based spokeswoman of the bank.
She has nearly 30 years of experience in banking and wealth management, according to a separate note from the firm. Before Standard Chartered, she was a senior director at HSBC. Prior to that, she led a team at DBS and also held various senior roles at UBS and Citi.
“Significantly rooted” in Singapore
Separately, Standard Chartered Bank announced earlier this month that it has been awarded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore the status of “significantly rooted foreign bank”, having incorporated all its banking businesses in the Lion City.
Standard Chartered said that while it is a global bank, Singapore is the bank’s operational hub housing its global business, technology, operations and innovation headquarters.
Around 70% of the 10,000 staff in Singapore are Singaporean citizens, according to a statement, noting that 70% of its management team are also comprised of local hires, and around 170 Singaporeans have posts overseas.
“The bank focuses on training and developing local talent in areas that require specialised skills sets, such as specialist financial markets roles, data scientist, risk modelling, cybersecurity, cloud computing and artificial intelligence,” it added.
