Standard Chartered first quarter pretax profit climbs 20%, beats forecasts

Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images

A pedestrian walks past a branch of Standard Chartered bank in Hong Kong on February 23, 2016.

Standard Chartered posted on Wednesday a better-than-expected 20 percent rise in pretax profit for the first three months of the year, helped by a surge in loan demand and improvement in asset quality.

Pretax profit for the bank, which focuses on Asia, Africa and the Middle East, rose to $1.26 billion in the quarter from $1.05 billion in the same period a year ago, it said in a filing to the stock exchange.

That was above an average estimate of $1.21 billion drawn from nine analysts in a poll collated by the bank.