Standard Chartered employees to access minimum 20-week parental leave benefit

KAMPALA, September 20, 2023  – Standard Chartered Bank recently announced the rollout of enhanced global parental leave benefits that will also benefit its employees in Uganda, effective September 1, 2023.

According to officials, the Bank will standardise the amount of parental leave it offers, providing parents the option of undertaking more equitable caregiving responsibilities for their children.

With the enhanced benefits, employees can access a minimum of 20 weeks of paid parental leave, irrespective of gender, relationship status or how a child comes to permanently join an employee’s family, the Bank says.

“The enhanced benefits have been designed to support working parents. This is part of the Bank’s commitment to fostering an inclusive culture, where employees are supported in balancing their personal lives with building successful careers.”

Tanuj Kapilashrami, Group Head, Human Resources, Standard Chartered, continues: “We continuously look at how we can introduce progressive benefits that drive inclusion, improve the employee experience, and help colleagues achieve their potential.

We believe benefits such as this help address globally prevalent societal norms around traditional roles, improve workforce participation and provide options to those who want to take up shared childcare responsibilities. This will positively impact families’ financial wellbeing and create a more inclusive workplace that supports each individual’s unique family planning choices.

We hope that our actions inspire other employers—across industries, around the world—to take similar actions. If we take a stand together, we can build a movement that creates a more inclusive society.”

Meanwhile, Zodia Custody, a subsidiary Standard Chartered that helps large institutions store their crypto, launched in Singapore days ago in a bid to tap into the country’s rapidly growing digital asset market.

The development makes Zodia the first entity that is owned by and partnered with banks to provide digital asset custody services for financial institutions in Singapore, Zodia said in a news release.

Zodia said it wants to expand across Asia-Pacific to cater to growing demand from institutions for bank-grade custody of digital assets, as well as demand from existing clients in the region, the company said.

Singapore is “getting to that next level of maturity” in terms of forming rules for cryptoassets and the development of central bank digital currencies, Zodia CEO Julian Sawyer told CNBC in a phone call. Sawyer was previously a co-founder of Starling Bank.

“Singapore is a market that has been no stranger to the crypto world for a long time,” Sawyer said. “We want to be part of it. We think that the market of a bank owned custodian is actually what the market is wanting.”

Zodia works with clients ranging from hedge funds and high frequency traders to prime brokers, exchanges, and asset managers.

“We adopt their risk their compliance frameworks, information security, resilience, [and] people managing,” he added.

Singapore has seen rapid growth when it comes to digital asset adoption. The city-state’s crypto ownership rate stands at 19 percent, according to market research firm Statista, higher than the global average of 15 percent.

Funding for crypto companies in Singapore has also remained strong despite a bear market the industry endured in the wake of the collapse of FTX, Three Arrows Capital, Terra, and various other previously prominent names.

Crypto or blockchain was the top area of fintech investment in Singapore in 2022, pulling in US$ 1.2 billion of funding in 2022, according to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech report for the second half of 2022. Crypto-related funding did still fall by 21 percent, however. Globally, crypto startups raised US$ 23.1bln in 2022, down 23 percent year-over-year.

Zodia’s move into Singapore comes on the heels of an expansion into Abu Dhabi. The company secured in-principle regulatory approval in Abu Dhabi earlier this month in a bid to take advantage of the United Arab Emirates capital’s crypto-friendly regulatory environment and status as a financial center.

Additional reporting by CNBC

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