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In his new role, he will shape the bank’s talent acquisition strategy across Asia, strengthen succession planning and internal mobility, elevate hiring quality and diversity, and drive global innovation in sourcing and assessing critical talent for the bank’s Wealth and Retail Banking business.
Standard Chartered has appointed Brent McDougall (pictured above) as Head of Talent Acquisition, Asia, and Global Head of Talent Acquisition for its Wealth and Retail Banking (WRB) business.
Prior to this, McDougall served as Head of Talent Acquisition, ASEAN and Singapore at the bank.
McDougall brings more than two decades of experience in talent acquisition within various sectors included technology, hospitality, real estate and operations. Over the course of his career, he has held regional and global roles across Standard Chartered and HSBC, leading executive search and talent acquisition (TA) initiatives across Asia Pacific and other international markets.
In his expanded role, he tells HRO, he is responsible for setting and executing the talent acquisition strategy across Asia, while leading global TA efforts for the WRB business. This includes ensuring the bank attracts, assesses, and hires critical capabilities aligned with its business strategy, transformation agenda, and long-term growth priorities.
His core responsibilities include:
- Shaping a future-ready TA strategy that supports business performance, risk discipline, and productivity.
- Building strong partnerships with business leaders and HR to anticipate talent needs and improve workforce outcomes.
- Elevating hiring quality, diversity, and internal mobility across markets.
- Strengthening TA capability, governance, and consistency while allowing for local market nuance.
- Driving innovation in how the bank sources, assesses, and deploys talent globally for WRB.
Reporting to Priya Kameshwari, Global Head Talent Acquisition & Deployment, he will be working closely with senior stakeholders across regions and functions.
Talking about his number one priority in the role, McDougall says it will be to ensure the bank has the right talent in the right roles at the right time, particularly in areas critical to WRB’s strategy and Asia’s growth agenda. This includes sharpening the focus on scarce and high-impact skills such as relationship managers, AI talent, and digital leadership, while improving the speed, quality, and consistency of hiring outcomes.
Beyond this, he aims to strengthen succession pipelines, support internal mobility, and position talent acquisition as a more strategic advisory function. The goal, McDougall shares, is to move talent acquisition further upstream — "from responding to demand, to shaping workforce decisions that directly impact business performance."
He shares that he is particularly excited by the opportunity to operate at the intersection of strategy, people, and execution, especially as talent becomes an increasingly competitive differentiator. To this point, he highlighted the importance of building strong, empowered TA teams and creating solutions that are globally aligned yet locally relevant across Asia’s diverse markets.
From a broader perspective, he noted that the most pressing talent challenge remains the widening gap between the skills organisations need and those available in the market — particularly in digital, data, AI, and frontline banking roles. This is further intensified by intense competition for the same talent pools rising candidate expectations.
At the same time, he sees significant opportunity in unlocking a skills-led approach to talent across the organisation.
He shares: "SCB has deep institutional knowledge and a tremendous number of talented individuals — the opportunity is to:
- Create clearer career pathways based skills.
- Encourage cross‑market and cross‑business movement
- Use TA as a connector between capability, aspiration, and opportunity.
"By doing this well, we not only reduce dependency on external hiring but also improve engagement, retention, and leadership depth, which is a win for both our people and the business."
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