The move underscores the growing importance of technology in the banking sector.

On Wednesday, Standard Chartered disclosed that it has established a business unit which will promote innovation and which will invest in financial technology.

While one part of SC Ventures, its business unit which will include internal consultants to help resolve issues with the rest of the group, it will also have a team which will invest and oversee new disruptive technology ventures owned by StanChart; another part will focus on managing the bank’s minority investments in ‘fintech’ and seek to back new ones.

“As new technology continues to play an ever more important role in banking, there is a huge opportunity for us to promote more innovation,” said Michael Gorriz, chief information officer of the Standard Chartered group.

Already StanChart has invested in Ripple, a payments company built on distributed ledger technology, and Paxata, a data firm.

StanChart will be managed by Alex Manson, its previous global head of transaction banking.