External environment for banking industry

Standard Chartered is the world's leading emerging markets bank headquartered in London. Standard Chartered employs 30,000 people in over 500 locations in more than 50 countries in the Asia Pacific Region, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the United Kingdom and the Americas. It is one of the world's most international banks, with a management team comprising 70 nationalities. Standard Chartered has been committed to Hong Kong and China for nearly 150 years. Standard Chartered Bank opened its first branch …

…a bank's overhead costs to a great extent. However abandoning bank branches can also give rise to disastrous strategic costs. New technologies have a led to a great transformation in the risk management practices of commercial banks, but application of such techniques may also create some unforeseen new risks. After generations of technological stasis in the banking industry, the ongoing rapid pace of technological change has made "strategic innovation" a viable competitive strategy for banks.