Sadya is an innovative business leader with over 20 years of experience in financial services across East Asia, the Middle East, and Pakistan. She excels in strategic leadership, revenue growth, P&L management, client engagement, team leadership, and digitizing solutions to enhance efficiency and client experience.

In a engaging interaction with Global Woman Leader Magazine, Saadya shares her insights on how banks can leverage global networks to redefine wealth and retail banking in emerging markets like Pakistan, embrace unconventional trends, drive digital transformation, and anticipate transformative shifts shaping the future of the banking landscape.

In what groundbreaking ways can banks leverage their global networks to redefine wealth and retail banking for emerging markets?

The ecosystem opportunity is huge - whether you assess it from the lens of client needs, advice, convenience, and product solutions or the flexibility international banks have in managing global assets under management and revenue pools. Stating the obvious, technology has really bridged the gap in what a global client can get regardless of their location, where they want to conduct their personal and business banking, and the product solutions they are interested in. We view our clients as Global Citizens who are interested in localized solutions for their needs. Keeping in mind each jurisdictions banking framework, we are able to offer our clients product & solutions that serve their financial needs. From getting clients started on the journey of wealth creation, building that wealth and subsequently the preservation of this wealth for upcoming generations, we are able to tap into our international corridors to provide personalized advice on solutions that will best serve their needs.

Over the last few years, we have taken a step further and now view the Personal and Business needs of clients with one view. We understand that once we have on boarded a corporate relationship, how  we cater to the needs of individual clients and provide access to individual banking that is digital, price sensitive, and helps them build and grow wealth is crucial. How we deliver this to them through a channel of their choice determines their experience. Personalization is key. What this means for clients is a one stop global bank and we can allocate better resources and offer a very diverse international product portfolio.

Which unconventional trends are shaping wealth and retail banking in Pakistan? How can banks anticipate and harness these changes for competitive advantage?

Pakistan’s economy is on a path of recovery from the recent economic crises, with growth recovering to 2.5% in the fiscal year June 2024, reflecting strong agriculture output, lower inflation, prudent macro-economic measures, and reduced political uncertainty. To sustain and strengthen this momentum, implementation of the government’s structural reforms plan that aims to address long standing constraints will be key. These include fixing the inequitable and distortive tax system, reducing inefficient expenditures and untargeted subsidies, reducing barriers to trade & investment, and loss reduction in the energy sector. We have seen a sharp decline in the interest rates with a drop of ~ 6% in the last couple of months. In my view this will force banks to focus on three key aspects (i) focus on deepening the key client relationships to have a higher wallet share (ii) protecting margins, and lastly (iii) explore fee-based avenues – this will create a sizeable opportunity for the Wealth Management business and not stress the balance sheet.

To capture this opportunity banks, need to offer personalized advice to clients on portfolio rebalancing as they start to look towards avenues that will help them maximize returns within their risk appetite. The quality of investment advisors who understand the client’s life stage and their risk and reward appetite will be key.

What innovative value propositions can wealth advisory services develop to create a distinctive identity in the wealth management sector?

Standard Chartered is a large and successful wealth manager in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and we are growing faster than the competition in these markets. We have been able to achieve this by focusing on three key differentiators: (i) Our client continuum, this helps us identify how we acquire, cross-sell and service clients based on their Assets Under Management, future needs and what resources should be allocated to these clients, (ii) a global network and, (iii) expertise in wealth solutions.

In Pakistan, banks will continue to focus on offering differentiated value propositions aligned to client needs, quality and timing of advice that is given to clients and leveraging digital assets for client experience and trade execution. What clients appreciate the most is a bank’s ability to offer a unified platform that allows them to transact, invest in mutual funds, participate in the equity markets, buy simple insurance products, and consolidate their holdings in one view. This is where banks who have a strong mobile banking platform will have an edge over competition.

Also, banks that recognize the AUM (Assets Under Management) and revenue pool of the global diaspora and design a strong non-resident proposition will be able to have a diversified portfolio that will help navigate macro-economic changes. Mortgages is one great example products that will always have a pull for the non-resident diaspora and in today’s interest rate environment is a ready opportunity.

How is the digital transformation of banks reimagining customer engagement in wealth and retail banking?

The pandemic did provide the stimulus for a much-needed move towards digital adoption. Clients demanded Transactional and Wealth Management capabilities delivered digitally and banks / fund managers understood the opportunity that existed in providing the same solution in a more time and cost-efficient manner. As I mentioned before participation in equities, basic investment in fixed income whether directly or through a fund wrapper, basic life and travel insurance has completely moved to digital platforms. For more complex products like high ticket investment or mortgages clients are still demanding a face-to-face interaction with the relevant experts – and we don’t see that consultative process of sales changing.

What makes the experience worthwhile is the UI (user interface) of the mobile apps, the ease to navigate, fewer clicks with all relevant collateral available for clients to refer to while transacting. The biggest win for the clients is to have access to products and in some jurisdiction even a remote RM at the time of their convenience therefore making the whole experience very powerful.

What transformative shifts do you foresee in Pakistan’s banking landscape in the next 5-10 years, amidst the surge of fintech innovation and the digital banking renaissance?

I think the biggest shift that Pakistan’s banking, and if I can be bold enough to say, even global banking will see is banks understanding the value we can generate through relationship-based incentives and rewards. This will be applicable to both digital only clients as well as those who want a hybrid – on demand human and digital relationship. So competitive pricing, accelerated rewards linked to the vintage and value of the relationship and lifestyle benefits will be key. The second biggest shift will be towards demonstrating to our clients that we understand them and their preferences through hyper personalization. And to be fair this is an area banks have already made considerable investment in, and the tools and services we have today are helping to meet that demand. E.g., If a client purchases a ticket for an international holiday, if the bank can reach out and offer installment-based payments or maybe even an insurance cover, what is clear to the client is that we are offering a solution at each touch point. I am cognizant that most of this sounds like what we do today, but I don’t think we have leveraged enough from the quality of data that we hold. Third shift will be a proactive move towards what generative AI can do in terms of driving efficiency and managing scale. An area where we feel it will help the most is to reduce the reliance on human capacity to manage client queries and help with real time query resolution based on client profile and history. This will also help reducing capacity in the Operations & Technology space through driving automation and efficiency (both time and cost wise). In a few markets we are also experimenting how Gen AI can help with writing client profiles that can help with onboarding globally using the same source of information. Lastly, talent management will remain key. We need to be more skills focused as this will help us develop a more global workforce