Trust Bank is S’pore’s newest digital bank jointly launched by Standard Chartered and NTUC

In September last year, Standard Chartered (StanChart) announced its partnership with the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) to launch a digital-only bank.

According to StanChart, the bank takes on a 60 per cent stake in the joint venture, which is worth S$144 million, while NTUC gets the remaining 40 per cent stake, worth S$96 million.

StanChart was awarded a full banking license by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in December 2020.

MAS first announced in June 2019 that it will award five digital bank licenses, which included up to two full bank licenses and up to three wholesale bank licenses. Out of 21 applicants, the Grab-Singtel consortium as well as e-commerce giant Sea — the parent company of Shopee — won the digital full banking license.

MAS also awarded digital wholesale bank licences to Jack Ma’s Ant Group, as well as a consortium comprising Greenland Financial Holdings, Linklogis Hong Kong and Beijing Co-operative Equity Investment Fund Management.

Trust Bank is StanChart’s second digital banking venture

StanChart’s digital-only bank in Singapore was previously referred to as ‘Project Phoenix’, but it has since been officially named as Trust Bank.

It’s helmed by CEO Dwaipayan Sadhu, who has been with StanChart for over 14 years. He is a retail financial services leader and has held leadership positions across a range of domains including wealth management, payments, deposits, consumer lending, and digital banking.

According to TrustBank’s LinkedIn page, it has 31 employees and there was no job postings.

This is StanChart’s second digital banking venture. In 2020, it launched its first digital-only banking venture called Mox – jointly owned with telecom firms PCCW and Hong Kong Telecom and online travel agency trip.com – in Hong Kong.

Featured Image Credit: Trust Bank / Isaac Lawrence via AFP