Green Banking

As part of our continuous endeavour to ensure customer friendly and trusted transactions through Internet Banking, the Bank has launched account to account fund transfer feature through i-Banking. Using this feature, a customer of Standard Chartered Bank will be able to transfer funds to another customer′s Standard Chartered account; round the clock, and from the comfort of home/office. We are proud to announce that we are the first bank in the country to introduce this fully secured system. Our valued customers are encouraged to use the new feature for any account-to-account transfer within Standard Chartered Bank. It's free of charge.

Under the Stop Print Initiative, very simple process changes by the CIB (Credit Information Bureau) team in Loan Operations resulted in big impact on sustainability and productivity. The team saved at least 30 rims of paper (15,000 sheets) and 17 man-days per month. To achieve this, printing of CIB reports was replaced with use of Microsoft Office clipboard for data-entry. Previously CIB reports were printed to facilitate manual input of customer information in a database. In the new process, the required information is simply copied to the clipboard in the computers in one go and then pasted in the database. This process saves both paper and time. Moreover, archival of reports will now be electronic, saving physical space and archival cost.

The operations team has also created a ‘No Print Team’, with the responsibility of exploring ideas and suggesting ways for the rest of the staff to reduce the volume of printing. We are looking forward to hearing simple but effective ideas from them to save paper.

As another step towards the continuous effort to improve customer experience, the Bank has launched its new Contact Centre on 27 August, after 6 months of extensive development and testing.

The new Contact Centre is a big change both in terms of system capabilities and customer experience. Along with the existing customer authentication process, the Bank is adding RAL authentication, a method through which a customer will be able to access his/her banking account in IVR by using Debit Card and its corresponding password. Generation of printed telephone identification number (TIN) can now be completely eradicated. It is a matter of pride that among all the countries where the Group operates, Bangladesh is the first country to have introduced the options for Debit Card activation and password generation through IVR. 60 additional phone lines have also been added to ensure better accessibility to the Centre. Customers are all welcome to call the Contact Centre and avail these features.

It's time to stop unnecessary printing. Here's our chance to kick the habit by following the Green Banking Guidelines! We would like have a ‘No Print Day’ on 18 August 2011 in Country Head-Office, on which day we focus on following the Green Printing Guideline.

We’re serious about the environment! 

Standard Chartered takes seriously the commitments to manage our direct impacts to the environment. Standard Chartered believes in fostering behavioural change at both the institution and individual levels to contribute to climate change mitigation efforts. We are committed to reducing Operational Impacts through the establishment of long term targets on energy, paper, water consumption, waste and carbon emissions from business related travel.

In Standard Chartered Bangladesh,We are committed to print in a responsible manner by adopting simple solutions to use paper, a limited resource, mindfully. It's time to stop unnecessary printing. Here's your chance to kick the habit by following the Green Banking Guidelines! We would like have a ‘No Print Day’ on 18 August 2011 in Country Head-Office, on which day we focus on following the Green Printing Guideline.

Green Printing Guidelines

Every little bit counts

• Use smaller font
• Narrow the margins before you print
• Adjust the content to fit the page 

Digitize yourself 

• Become more efficient: use emails instead of fax and letters
• Cut down on your paperwork: pay bills online, opt for e-statements
• Edit electronically: use track changes

Think before you press the button

• Review it - use print preview to check format
• Proofread it - use grammar and spell check
• Fit it - two, three or four slides in one handout 
• Share it - two can look at one document, don't make extras

Everything has two sides

• Cut costs, cut paper consumption - print double-sided 
• Use it twice, recycle paper for notes, for printing and faxes

Be paperless... kick the habit 

• Do you need slides in paper at meetings?
• Do you need it in colour? Print in black and white
• Do you encourage others?
• Insert 'Consider the environment before you print this' as a footnote/footer

The Bank recently organized a workshop titled ‘Leveraging Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network’ to promote the usage of automated interbank payment processing. Mr. Ashim Kumar Dasdupta, Executive Director of Bangladesh Bank was the keynote speaker at the event.

Transaction banking recently held a seminar on Straight2Bank for all Development Organization clients. The intention was to promote Straight2Bank in line with BEFTN and the need for automation. The event included presentation, live demo and interactive Q&A with nearly 90 participants. 5 awards were also distributed to key clients for highest volume of transactions in Payments and for different high-end system integrations. The recipients of these awards were British High Commission, WFP Bangladesh, Australian High Commission, United Nations Development Programme and The British Council.

June 5 was World Environment Day. The theme for this year was ‘Forests: Nature at your service’.Special employee activity was organized to celebrate the environment: such as:

• We want to create our mini forest on the balcony of the cafeteria of SCB House. Staffs are encouraged to bring in a plant in a pot, and place it in the balcony of level-5. As work is going on in the cafeteria balcony, we will park our mini forest in the level-5 balcony for the time being.
• Do bring in the plant by Sunday, June 12.
• Don’t forget to write your Bank ID on the pot, as there will be gifts for early birds and lucky ones.
• As it was hartal on the World Environment Day, and we don’t want our colleagues to miss the occasion, we will celebrate the occasion on a later date. Watch out for announcements in this space.
• Those who made a pledge on last year’s World Environment Day, and kept to the promise, do tell us your stories, and there will be a special gift for you.

Timely & effective payments constitute a critical element of the development work that NGOs and Donor Organisations do in Bangladesh. In view of this, we held a workshop on “Payment Solutions” through BEFTN (Bangladesh Electronic Fund Transfer Network) and Off-site Cheque Printing. We had invited select NGOs and Embassy Clientele at our North Gulshan Branch for this workshop. The workshop was facilitated jointly by the Development Organisations and Transaction Banking teams.

Last year, we printed 509 million sheets of paper at a cost of USD 10.4 million. That is equivalent to:

• A total of 161,163 trees
• A 32 square kilometre area of forest, that’s half the size of Hong Kong island
• A pile of paper four times the height of Mount Everest
• A paper trail that could travel around the world nearly four times over

You can help. Take these measures and you will see drastic reduction in your printing:

• Edit your documents electronically by using track changes
• Use your print preview function to check your documents for formatting errors before printing
• Instead of printing presentations and agendas, use your laptop at meetings
• Print multiple slides in one page when printing presentations

Transaction Banking recently held a seminar on Straight2Bank for all our Wholesale Banking clients based in Dhaka on 25 April 2011. The purpose of the seminar was to educate our customers on the benefits of using Straight2Bank.

Straight2Bank is an integrated electronic platform for corporate clients of our bank. It offers comprehensive transaction access and reporting flexibility across cash, (payments & collections), documentary trade and security services. This electronic channel has two connectivity options and can be customized for the users. 170 clients of different segments attended the event and participated in the interactive question and answers session & live demos of Straight2Bank. Nine awards were distributed to key clients for highest volume of transactions in Trade and Payments & for various high-end system integrations. Customers at the seminar were very enthusiastic about adopting Straight2Bank within their organizations to facilitate their daily transactional requirements.

A large number of our clients in Dhaka, Chittagong & EPZ are already using Straight2Bank. With continued use, our customers can benefit by improving efficiencies, improving visibility on financial positions, making quicker decisions and better utilizing their business resources.

Transaction Banking recently held a seminar on Straight2Bank for all our Wholesale Banking clients based in Chittagong. The purpose of the seminar was to educate our customers on the benefits of using Straight2Bank.

Straight2Bank is an integrated electronic platform for corporate clients of our bank. It offers comprehensive transaction access and reporting flexibility across cash, (payments & collections), documentary trade and security services. This electronic channel has three connectivity options and can be customized for the users. A large number of our clients in Dhaka, Chittagong & EPZ are already using Straight2Bank. With continued use, our customers can benefit by improving efficiencies, improving visibility on financial positions, making quicker decisions and better utilizing their business resources.

Customers at the seminar were very enthusiastic about adopting Straight2Bank within their organizations to facilitate their daily transactional requirements.

We are pleased to launch Auto Coupon Encashment Service of Sanchaypatra (Govt. Savings Certificates). For the 1st time in Bangladesh, now our customers can enjoy getting Sanchaypatra interest automatically credited into their account once enrolled. We will encash the coupons on every maturity (quarterly) and deposit into the customer's account automatically. That's not all; the principal amount will also be encashed on maturity. This service will be applicable initially for coupon-based Sanchaypatras - 3 monthly Interest Bearing Sanchaypatras (3MSP) & Pensioner Sanchaypatras (PSC) purchased from Standard Chartered Bank. Customers just need to visit any of our branches with the Sanchaypatra and fill out the enrolment form.

This unique initiative will surely add a lot convenience and comfort to our customers as they will no longer need to make repeated visits to the branches for encashing their Sanchaypatra coupons and it will take us a step closer to our Branch Optimization agenda. The custodial fee for this service is BDT 1,000/per registration (if the bond is purchased on or after 01 January 2010) and BDT 500/- per registration (if the bond is purchased before 01 January 2010) for the entire tenor. Customers can keep any number of bonds with us under this facility.

We would like to thank our colleagues in Legal & Compliance; IT and Security Bonds for their excellent support in launching such an innovative solution. Please spread this good news to our customers and near & dear ones.