Yesterday, London-headquartered Standard Chartered released positive financial results for the first half and second quarter of 2025.

Standard Chartered's underlying profit before tax climbed 34 per cent year-over-year to $2.4 billion in the second quarter of 2025, as strong performances across its wealth management, markets and global banking divisions lifted revenue.

The emerging markets-focused bank, which generates a lot of its income in Asia and Africa, saw a 14 per cent rise in operating income to $5.5 billion, while the bank maintained disciplined cost management with expenses increasing by 3 per cent.

The financial breakdown shows that while Net Interest Income (NII) remained relatively flat year-over-year at $2.7 billion, non-NII rose 31 per cent to $2.8 billion. The growth helped offset pressure on interest margins from the changing rate environment. The bank’s underlying return on tangible equity (RoTE) reached 19.7 per cent, up about 7 percentage points from the previous year.

A significant contributor to the quarter’s performance was a $238 million gain from the Solv India transaction with Jumbotail. Even excluding this one-off gain, income grew by 10 per cent year-over-year, highlighting the strength of the bank’s core businesses.

The Wealth and Retail Banking (WRB) division performed well, with Wealth Solutions income growing 20 per cent year-over-year to $742 million. The growth was broad-based across geographies and products, with expansion in capital markets activities.

The WRB division achieved a record quarter for net new money (NNM) of $16 billion. The bank’s position as the third-largest wealth manager in Asia by assets under management continues to improve, with affluent AuM growing at an 11 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2016.

“Our strong first-half performance reflects continued successful execution of our strategy, through our focus on cross-border and affluent banking,” said chief executive Bill Winters. “We delivered record net new money in the second quarter, alongside double-digit income growth in wealth solutions, global markets and global banking.”

The bank also announced a new $1.3 billion share buyback, which it said would “commence imminently.”