Wealth management continues to drive income growth and both are achieving excellent performance across many geographies, with particularly strong performances in India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Africa and Singapore and the Middle East and South Africa at Standard Chartered.

The bank says that is has accelerated investment across the franchise, especially in distribution product capability in SME and Wealth Management, the Private Bank (which has now been launched in seven countries), China, Pakistan, and India.

In a pre-close trading update Standard Chartered said that trading conditions in the group’s main operating markets continue to benefit from strong economic conditions, good local currency liquidity and benign credit environments.

The bank says that during the second half of the year there have been three specific items that impact upon its group’s results. These relate to: taking a representative proportion of Whistlejacket assets onto the balance sheet; the impact of accounting asymmetry on economically effective hedges in Korea, and a delay in the sale of the Indian fund business which had been anticipated to close this year.

But Standard Chartered says that the impact of these items has been balanced by the strength of the group’s trading performance.