Run your business responsibly and take care of your customers

Richard Meddings joined the board of Standard Chartered as an executive director in 2002, and has been finance director since 2006. Before joining the bank, he was chief operating officer for Barclays Private Clients. He is currently chairman of Seeing is Believing, a Standard Chartered community investment project focused on preventing avoidable blindness. Meddings talked to Oliver Balch


Ethical Corporation: Standard Chartered has just committed to raise $63m between now and 2020 to prevent avoidable blindness. Is this a new philanthropic venture? 


Richard Meddings: No, not exactly. We’ve been raising money for avoidable blindness since 2003. By 2010, we’d raised $37m. This has helped us reach over 25 million people with cures, preventions or information for those at risk. Our new target will bring us up to a total of $100m. It’s not about giving money for a year or two and then moving on. Our financial commitment is over the next nine years, which will give our NGO partners the time to develop projects that will benefit communities on a long-term basis.


Ethical Corporation: $63m is no small amount. How do you plan to go about raising it?


Richard Meddings: There is amazing momentum for fundraising for Seeing is Believing at Standard Chartered – 70% of fundraising for Seeing is Believing is led by employees. The bank also matches every dollar fundraised – until we reach our target – which is a great incentive to fundraise and donate. In some cases, we also use the bank’s network to fundraise. For example, our financial markets team organise Brokers’ Day each year, where they persuade partners to donate a day’s trading fees. Last year they raised $1.2m, including the bank’s matching contribution.


Ethical Corporation: Banks have had a rough ride of it since 2007-08. Are programmes like this geared towards winning back trust and reputation?


Richard Meddings: The most important way to maintain public trust is to do the right thing, run your business responsibly, take care of your customers and be a great place to work for your employees. This is essential. As for community investment, it’s important for reasons beyond just corporate reputation. It’s about giving back to the local economy through job creation and lending, but also using our expertise to make a difference in the communities where our customers and employees live.


Ethical Corporation: As a bank, wouldn’t it be more logical for Standard Chartered to concentrate its efforts in areas such as micro-finance?


Richard Meddings: Since 2005, we have provided more than $720m worth of credit and financial instruments to the microfinance industry in Africa and Asia, surpassing our Clinton Global Initiative commitment of $500m two years ahead of schedule. As an international bank, we help microfinance institutions access capital markets and help them integrate into the formal financial sector. So we are very active in this area.


Ethical Corporation: Did the financial crash encourage Standard Chartered to rethink its approach to responsible banking?


Richard Meddings: The events of 2007-08 were primarily a western banking crash driven by too much credit and lax regulation, with some banks certainly acting irresponsibly. Action has certainly been taken – by banks and by regulators – and lessons learned. Our markets are in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, so we were not impacted so directly by the crisis. In fact, most Asian banks, including Standard Chartered, maintained their focus on the basics of banking. We continued to support customers during and after the crisis, for instance. Our customer loans are now 75% higher than they were in mid-2007.


Ethical Corporation: What is Standard Chartered doing to promote sustainable finance internally?


Richard Meddings: We initiated our social and environmental risk policy in 1997. It was clear, however, that our frontline staff wanted guidance on where the bank stood on specific environmental and social issues. Now the bank has 14 position statements on everything from child labour and climate change to gambling and water. In addition, we now evaluate and mitigate social and environmental risk across lending, debt capital markets activities, project finance, principal finance and advisory work.


Ethical Corporation: Standard Chartered has recently commissioned social and economic impact reports on Ghana and Indonesia. Why is this?


Richard Meddings: These reports illustrate that international banks add value to national economies in ways that go far beyond the provision of credit. For example, Standard Chartered supports Ghana’s economy by using its global footprint to enable trade and investment flows, spurring innovation through the launch of new products and improving access to finance, among others.


The reports have also allowed us to re-evaluate and improve the way we do business. For example, the report indicated that SMEs were in need of advisory support on accounting and corporate governance. We’ve since partnered with PwC to provide hands-on training for SMEs in Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia.


Standard Chartered: fast facts

Sector: Banking

Headquarters: London

Markets: 90% of income and profits in Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Offices: 1,700 globally

Number of staff: 85,000

2010 pre-tax profit: $6.12bn



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