Standard Chartered Bank Sunday opened an operation center in Tianjin's Binhai New Area in order to solidify its back-office operations in China and support its rapid business growth in the country.

This is Standard Chartered's third operation center globally, following centers in India and Malaysia.

With an initial investment of $2 million, the center currently offers back-office services including account management, loan processing, and payable accounts processing.

The bank will add further investment to the center and plans to transfer all back-office operations in China to the Tianjin hub.

Previously, back-office supports for the bank's China business were partly done at its China headquarters in Shanghai and partly at its operation centers in India and Malaysia.

"Standard Chartered Bank has been in China for more than 150 years and we are enjoying a rapid growth in the country at the moment," said Peter Sands, the bank's group chief executive.

"To support that rapid growth, we need a consolidated back-end platform that enables us increase work efficiently, provide high-quality customer service delivery and meet the future operational needs of the bank," he said.

Overseas banks including Standard Chartered, Citi, HSBC and Bank of East Asia have accelerated their business expansion on the mainland after setting up local entities and were given the green light to offer renminbi services to Chinese residents in April.

But Standard Chartered appears to be the first overseas bank to set up an operation center in the country.

"The first priority for the hub is to support growth in China, which is a key market for us," Sands said.

"As the capability and scale of the hub improves, we expect it to offer support to business elsewhere across the world, backing up the other two hubs," he said.

According to bank sources, Standard Chartered examined a dozen Chinese cities and finally chose Tianjin. It signed a memorandum of understanding with the managing committee of Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA) last December.

"The reasons for locating the center here are due to good geographic location of Binhai New Area, the quality of people the bank can approach, overall cost-efficiency, as well as good teamwork partnership with Tianjin municipal government and TEDA," Sands said.

Also yesterday Standard Chartered opened a new sub-branch in Binhai, bringing its mainland network to a total of 12 branches, 14 sub-branches and three representative offices.

(China Daily July 20 2007)