The lender posted a pre-tax profit of $994m for the January-June period compared to a loss of $990m in the second half of 2015.
While its corporate and institutional banking division returned to profit in the first six months of 2016, its retail banking added over 40,000 priority clients, 3 million active digital banking clients globally.
During the first half, the bank launched advanced mobile and on-line banking platforms across Africa, and launched video banking in Singapore and Malaysia.
Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said: “The external environment and outlook is more difficult but we are strengthening our bank, becoming more efficient and investing in our future.
“By maintaining our financial strength and completing our transformation during this period of heightened uncertainty we will be able to weather near-term volatility, fix our legacy issues, and capture significant underlying opportunities as they arise.”
The bank’s underlying income remained stable at $6.8bn in each of the first two quarters, while operating costs fell 13% to $4bn on year-over-year basis.
The bank said: “Commercial Banking strengthened operational and credit risk management, reduced cost base and improving turnaround times for transactions and client on-boarding.”
Standard Chartered said that it is investing $250m in private banking to upgrade underlying technology and core banking platform.
The bank reported a pretax loss of $1.5bn in 2015, posting its first annual loss since 1989.
In November 2015, the bank announced plans to slash 15,000 jobs in order to simplify its organizational structure by 2018.
Image:Standard Chartered Bank Building in Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy of Baycrest / Wikimedia Commons.
