Standard Chartered Private Bank sees growth in Fintech and Impact Investing in the UK

New report series, Better Life Breakthroughs, explores innovations that will change how we invest, work, play and manage our health

Standard Chartered Private Bank is seeing increasing interest in fintech and impact investing from its high and ultra high net worth clients. In a client survey conducted late last year, about 10 per cent of its private banking clients globally are interested in impact investing, and 14 per cent interested in fintech.

“High net worth individuals (HNWIs) are increasingly socially conscious and looking for investment with the potential to benefit society. We estimate that assets under management in SRI investment could grow from USD77bn to as much as USD300bn-400bn by 2020, driven largely by the increase in wealth held by milennials,” said Ian Gibson, Regional Head, Europe, Africa & the Middle East at Standard Chartered Private Bank. “With our footprint in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, we are well placed to connect our clients in the UK and Europe with SRI investment opportunities in emerging markets.”

London is one of the world’s major hubs of fintech innovation and the UK remains third in total fintech investment, behind the US and China. In Europe, impact investing has been the fastest growing strategy over the past 2 years, growing by 385 per cent between 2013 and 2015 to EUR98.3bn. Various studies suggest this could increase significantly between USD500bn to USD1 trillion by 2020.

Fintech and sustainable, responsible and impact investing (SRI) were themes explored as part of Standard Chartered Private Bank’s latest thought leadership report with the Economist Intelligence Unit on major forces impacting the global investment landscape. Innovation in Investment explores how technology is creating new investment opportunities for high net worth investors, where these were previously the domain of large funds and institutional investors. This report is the first in its “Better Life Breakthroughs” series, a collection of reports that highlight the latest advances in investment, personal health, leisure and work. Backed by in-depth interviews with experts and detailed desk research, the reports discuss innovations that have the potential to enrich lives, create unique experiences and improve society.

Key highlights of the report include:

• SRI is on the cusp of a revolution with a more socially conscious generation. Sustainability will become more standardised, with the creation of more objective frameworks and measurements for key sustainability indicators, taking the “guesswork” out of sustainable investing.
•  “Green” will go mainstream, where data on sustainability approaches and performance will be as important as financials of companies and funds.
• There is an emerging SRI-fintech feedback loop, where fintech has a significant potential to contribute to the growth of SRI investing.

“The general opinion has been that fintech is all about disrupting the banking system. This report goes beyond simple disruption to the potential of joint development between fintech, SRI and banking. There is a need to facilitate the discovery, curation, transparency and reporting of impact investments, in order for the millennial’s desire to invest to be executable and for a greater amount of private capital to be channelled. These needs can potentially be answered by technology companies and fintech can help us expose more of our clients to impact investing,” concluded Gibson.