Where Are They Now? Catching Up With the 2011 Elite 8

As mobile and digital technologies continue to reshape banking, we caught up with some of the 2011 Elite 8 to see how the changing expectations of consumers, employees and partners are transforming their focus.

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Aman Narain, Global Head of Online and Mobile Banking, Standard Chartered (London)

Aman Narain, global head of online and mobile banking for Standard Chartered since 2008, has kept busy since being recognized as an Elite 8 honoree last year. In addition to overseeing the bank's mobile and online channels, he is now responsible for digital channels within branches and ATMs and for developing integrated solutions across all of them.

According to Narain, Standard Chartered has been ramping up a focus on monetizing the web, using the online channel for sales and wealth management capabilities in particular, especially in Hong Kong, where the firm recently launched mobile trading applications. The firm also has extended its suite of mobile applications, Breeze, in terms of both geography and capabilities. Breeze now enables equity trading, for example. The mobile app suite even supports the home-buying process, generating mortgage business. "With Breeze," Narain explains, "you can point a mobile phone at a building and it will tell you everything you need to know about it." Breeze currently is available in nine markets and will be in three more by the end of the year.

Standard Chartered is beginning to offer its smartphone banking solutions from more developed markets, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea, in Africa, starting in Nigeria and extending across the continent. The firm also launched smartphone banking in China in the spring. "That was extensively an iPhone client, but now we're using mobile web to help serve our Android users in these markets as well," Narain relates.

From a servicing perspective, Narain says, Standard Chartered will work to help customers serve themselves and manage their account relationship directly, without having to come into a branch. "In some of our markets where we don't have a wide branch presence, travel times are long -- in places like India, for instance," Narain explains. "So we will focus on self-service through the online channels and on integrating that information into a CRM system that we've been building over the past year."

Peggy Bresnick Kendler has been a writer for 30 years. She has worked as an editor, publicist and school district technology coordinator. During the past decade, Bresnick Kendler has worked for UBM TechWeb on special financialservices technology-centered ... View Full Bio