Foreign lender, Standard Chartered Bank's consumer banking arm is focusing on SME business and plans to double it in the upcoming three years, said CEO of the bank.

The bank is expanding heavily both priority and private banking services. The bank is planning to recruit 1200 relationship managers (RMs) to cater to the needs of small and medium enterprises in the upcoming three years.

"Almost everything we are trying to do, we want to double," Stanchart's CEO for global consumer banking Steve Bertamini said.

"We're not just trying to bank the SMEs but we're trying to bank the owner as well," Bertamini said, referring to the synergy between private banking and SMEs.

"When an SME customer gets larger, it's a natural transition to get them into wholesale. Likewise many large wholesale clients have small supply chain clients which are in the SME sector," he added.

"We see more SMEs expanding cross-borders or their suppliers or distributors being in some other countries - that ability to bank and do financial business across borders is a key need," he said.