Senior Associate Director

Standard Chartered is recruiting a Senior Associate Director to join its Wealth and Retail Banking team in Dubai. The bank operates with about 25,000 colleagues across 35 countries and is focused on transforming how it serves millions of affluent and emerging affluent clients worldwide, offering a mix of traditional banking services, investments and wealth planning. This is an onsite, full-time position in Dubai, geared toward someone who enjoys building relationships, onboarding new clients and managing a portfolio with clear communication and negotiation skills.

The role centers on developing strategic relationships and expanding the client base across the region, while delivering top-notch service to a portfolio of clients. You’ll be expected to balance new business development with ongoing client servicing, ensuring professional, responsive support that aligns with regulatory standards and risk controls. The team serves individuals and small businesses, combining digital tools with personalised advice to meet their banking and wealth needs.

Within Standard Chartered’s Wealth and Retail Banking arm, the focus is on serving over 11 million clients in fast-growing markets, blending digital banking with human guidance for products such as deposits, payments, financing, wealth management and tailored advice. The company emphasises diversity and inclusion and seeks someone who can help drive client outcomes in a region with a multicultural business landscape.

Day-to-day contributions in client relations

You’ll map out revenue-generation plans and steer business growth while advancing the bank’s digital agenda. You’ll bring in new business to hit targets for customer numbers, volumes, revenue, product mix and related liabilities and transactions, and you’ll induct new-to-bank clients brought in by branches and the Direct Sales team. You’ll craft sales call plans to win large prospective customers through referrals and keep Sales MIS updated with calls, prospects and business activity. You’ll focus on meeting customer expectations, handling and reducing complaints, and delivering professional service to sustain high levels of customer satisfaction and retention. You’ll lead by example, setting the tone for the team and coordinating with risk and control partners. You’ll monitor KYC/AML updates and ensure precise, error-free documentation, while staying alert to suspicious transactions and potential risks. You’ll uphold strict compliance with anti-bribery, AML and financial crime risk procedures, and you’ll obtain an SCA license within six months of joining and complete CPD requirements after licensing.

What you’ll bring to the client portfolio

Must-haves include a proven background as a sales and relationship manager with experience across banking and investment products, paired with strong communication and negotiation skills that influence outcomes. You should be adept at networking to align deliverables across departments and drive results, and you’ll need leadership and interpersonal abilities that energise a team and foster collaboration. A solid understanding of the UAE business environment is important, with preferred direct contacts among local high-net-worth clients. The role calls for comfort in a multicultural workplace and a deep grasp of capital markets and financial planning. Finally, you should be SCA certified or prepared to complete the certificate within six months.

• Proven experience in sales and relationship management across banking and investment products, with a track record of influencing decisions
• Excellent networking skills to coordinate across multiple teams and achieve targets
• Leadership and interpersonal strengths that build team spirit and collaboration
• Strong knowledge of the UAE market with contact points among high-net-worth individuals
• Ability to adapt to a multicultural environment
• Solid understanding of capital markets and financial planning concepts
• SCA certification or commitment to obtain it within six months

Nice-to-haves are not specifically listed beyond the items above, but any additional experience that shows you can operate effectively in a banking and wealth management setting will help you stand out.

Compensation, benefits and working details

The role is aligned with Standard Chartered’s Fair Pay Charter, offering a competitive salary and a benefits package designed to support wellbeing across mental, physical, financial and social aspects.

• Retirement savings funding and medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits depending on location
• Generous time-off, including annual leave plus parental/maternity leave of 20 weeks, a sabbatical of up to 12 months and 3 days of volunteering leave, with a 30 days minimum combined total of annual and holiday leave
• Flexible working options based on home and office locations and patterns
• Wellbeing support via resources like Unmind, access to development courses for resilience and other human skills, an Employee Assistance Programme, sick leave and mental health support
• Ongoing learning opportunities to reskill and upskill through physical, virtual and digital formats
• An inclusive, values-led environment that champions diversity and gives everyone room to realise their potential

Advice for applicants for this senior client role in Dubai

Lead with your banking and investment product experience on the top lines of your resume, and highlight specific outcomes you’ve achieved with affluent clients in the UAE or similar markets.

When you describe your must-have skills, ground them in numbers: show how you grew a client base, the revenue or product mix improvements you delivered, and how many NTB accounts you helped onboard or how you supported a large client portfolio.

Be ready to discuss how you handle KYC/AML duties and what you did to ensure zero-error documentation, plus a concrete example of partnering with risk and control functions to manage a difficult customer situation or a compliance scenario.

Ask about how on-boarding NTB clients works with both branches and the Direct Sales team, the expected cadence for onboarding in the first six months, and how SCA licensing and CPD requirements are tracked and measured in practice.