Summary
Human Made worked with Standard Chartered from a prototype in 2016 into the bank’s primary global web platform. The agency partnered closely with internal teams to run a multisite WordPress platform that serves corporate, wealth, investor relations and local market sites across dozens of countries.
Scale and scope
Standard Chartered operates in roughly 70 countries and about 150 markets with around 85,000 employees. The WordPress platform handles hundreds of millions of page views per month and routes over 95% of the bank’s web traffic. About 500 people across central and country marketing teams use the CMS regularly. The network supports roughly 30 languages and is organized by market rather than via a single centralized translation pipeline.
What the platform does
The WordPress installs do not process financial transactions, but they drive mission‑critical content and customer messaging: notifications for internet banking apps, investor dashboards and visualizations, corporate communications, and market‑specific marketing sites. Editors create and maintain dynamic content that feeds multiple customer journeys and channels.
Security, compliance and governance
Banking requirements shaped much of the platform work. Human Made pursued industry compliance (including an audit by Deloitte) and invested significantly in meeting governance demands—an effort they describe as costly but essential. They also maintain SOC2 and enterprise security practices, and collaborate tightly with Standard Chartered’s internal security teams. Employees at Human Made contribute to the WordPress Security Team, helping to translate enterprise fixes back into community security improvements.
Winning enterprise confidence
In 2016, convincing stakeholders that WordPress could scale and meet security expectations was a major hurdle. An internal champion within the bank accelerated adoption. Today WordPress is considered alongside other enterprise CMS options. Human Made highlights two decisive advantages for enterprises: flexibility to integrate with unique systems and workflows, and a highly usable editor experience that often transforms content teams used to clunky legacy tools.
Avoiding vendor lock-in
A consistent sales message was portability: open source means no vendor lock‑in. Human Made builds platforms and open sources work so customers retain ownership and the freedom to change partners or self‑manage. This aligns with enterprise procurement goals to avoid proprietary, locked ecosystems.
Packaging the fragmented WordPress ecosystem
Enterprises face a fragmented landscape of hosts, plugins and agencies. Human Made’s role is to package that ecosystem into an enterprise service: coordinated vendor management, clear roadmaps, platform operations and a single trusted contact for governance. They act as integrator and operator so internal teams see a coherent platform rather than a set of disconnected components.
Partnership model and delivery
The platform is run as a partnership. Standard Chartered created an internal web platform team and governance model; day‑to‑day management is split about 50/50 between Human Made and the bank’s team. Country teams are treated as customers of the platform. Development runs in continuous two‑week sprints—no finite end point but ongoing evolution and improvements.
Modern tooling: blocks, Gutenberg and custom features
The project uses modern WordPress tools: Gutenberg blocks, patterns and selective Full Site Editing. Human Made prefers styling core blocks when possible and building custom blocks for specialized needs. For example, investor charts and data visualizations are embedded as dynamic Gutenberg blocks that fetch external API data, letting editors create live charts in the editor rather than uploading static images. Blocks function as mini‑applications to integrate external APIs and visualizations into content workflows.
Editorial experience and workflows
To meet strict governance and approval requirements, the backend includes custom workflows and publishing controls. Still, Human Made keeps conventions familiar: the editing experience remains roughly 60–70% similar to stock WordPress so trained editors can onboard quickly. Additional features—approvals, overlays and publish actions—are placed where users expect them to minimize friction.
Multisite and multilingual approach
Standard Chartered uses a multisite setup so each country or market has its own site. Rather than central translation, local teams create or adapt content for their markets. This model supports local compliance, regulatory differences and market‑specific marketing needs.
Accessibility and automated checks
Accessibility is enforced platform‑wide as both a compliance and quality requirement. Deployments run automated accessibility checks against WCAG standards (Tom and Jon cited WCAG 2.2 AA checks). The same baseline is applied across markets to ensure consistency even when local laws differ.
Release cadence and Core alignment
Human Made has moved to fewer major releases per year, which suits enterprise stakeholders. Some clients follow WordPress Core closely; others prefer a managed service. The agency balances both, taking responsibility for updates and aligning roadmaps with Core developments when necessary.
Contributing back to WordPress
Human Made contributes to WordPress through early adoption, code contributions, security fixes and feature work. They were early Gutenberg users, experimented during beta, and added features like collaborative real‑time editing in their installs. Enterprise learnings and fixes are fed back to Core, helped by staff involvement in WordPress security and community teams. Being contributors also gives clients early visibility and smoother transitions.
Business model and cultural approach
Human Made positions itself as a platform partner rather than a locking vendor. Their offering emphasizes portability, open source values and deep WordPress expertise packaged for enterprise procurement. The combination of enterprise experience, platform operations and open contributions helps bridge community software with corporate requirements.
Key takeaway
Standard Chartered’s example shows that WordPress can be a primary global web platform when supported by strong governance, a security‑first approach, clear partnership models and careful packaging of the ecosystem. Flexibility, editor usability, open source portability and tight collaboration between agency and internal teams made WordPress work at scale for a major international bank.