STANDARD CHARTERED SPENDS US$3.6 MILLION IN NETWORK UPGRADE

12 May 2008, Kuala Lumpur – Standard Chartered Bank will spend US$3.6 million over the next four years to enhance IT network infrastructure across 40 sites in its Malaysian branch network.

The new and more resilient Metro-Ethernet (Metro-E) network, which delivers cost effective, high speed connectivity for WAN applications & services, will raise capacity ranging from 256K and 512K to 2MB for all Standard Chartered Bank branches, as well as a total of 160MB of aggregated capacity for two designated network hub sites.

“With Metro-E, Standard Chartered will be able to provide our customers with even more efficient services and better products, “said Arif Siddiqui, CIO, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia & Head, GSSC KL. “The Bank will be able to roll-out bandwidth intensive new applications and services like e-Kiosks, e-Branch enhancements and Rapid Cash transactions.”

Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia expects the Metro-E upgrade to be completed by Q3, 2008. The previous infrastructure supported legacy financial transactions and ran on COINS Frame Relay with ISDN back-up. The new Metro-E technology has already been successfully implemented in the Standard Chartered Bank’s Singapore and Hong Kong branch environments.