SINGAPORE - ABN Amro Bank has surrendered its licence in Singapore and will no longer provide corporate and institutional banking services.

The Dutch bank told The Straits Times on Wednesday that it started to wind down the business here in 2020 and its last local client exited at the beginning of 2023.

The lender, whose investment banking division was hit by the Covid-19 crisis, said in August 2020 that it would stop providing corporate finance outside Europe and cease all trade and commodity finance activities.

It planned to cut up to 800 jobs or a third of its corporate and institutional banking unit in a process that would take three to four years.

It said later in 2020 that it would cut more than 2,500 jobs or about 15 per cent of its workforce.

ABN Amro said that corporate banking in the United States, Asia, Australia and Brazil would be wound down but the bank would keep its global clearing business, one of the world’s biggest.

Its Singapore business had €2.1 billion (S$3 billion) worth of assets out of the bank’s total assets of €379.6 billion, according to its 2022 annual report.

This was its fourth-largest overseas market by assets, behind the United States, France and Germany.

The bank declined to say how many staff here were affected by the cuts, adding that those with suitable profiles were moved to ABN Amro Clearing Singapore.

It reiterated that it will continue to carry out activities under its two remaining entities here – ABN Amro Clearing Bank and ABN Amro Clearing Singapore.

The licensing status of these entities is unchanged.

Singapore is the regional hub for the bank’s treasury and funding services and has experienced strong growth over the past decade, said ABN Amro, adding: “We are committed to remain in Singapore to provide these services to our current clients.”

ABN Amro was among the 20 banks hit by the collapse of Hin Leong Trading.

It was the Singapore oil trader’s second-largest bank creditor and was said to be owed US$300 million (S$412 million).

It was also among the four banks with the highest exposure to defunct payments company Wirecard.

French bank Societe Generale shut its trade commodity desk in Singapore in 2020 after Hin Leong’s fall prompted it to halt fresh funding to such firms in the region.