Our use of Cookies.

We use Cookies for the following purposes:

  • To improve the performance of our websites by understanding which parts work well, and which don’t.
  • To deliver relevant online advertising to you both on our websites and elsewhere. This is sometimes done by combining data that we already have about you with the data collected through Cookies. These Cookies are placed by us and selected third parties and enable adverts to be presented to you on ours and third party websites.
  • To measure how effective our online advertising and marketing communications are.
  • To enable us to collect information about how you and other people use our websites.
  • To improve your experience on our websites, for example we use Cookies to remember the subject areas that you have looked at and to personalise your experience.

What Cookies do we use? 

We use the following Cookies:

Strictly necessary Cookies
These are Cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They are necessary for the safety, security and integrity of the site. For example they help support the structure of the pages that are displayed to you, help to improve navigation and allow you to return to pages you have previously visited. This type of Cookie only lasts for the duration of the time you are visiting the website. When you leave the website they are deleted automatically.

Performance Cookies or analytical Cookies
They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. The data is aggregated and anonymised, which means we cannot identify you as an individual.

Targeting Cookies
These Cookies will collect information about your browsing habits and allow us to show you adverts while you are browsing our site and other sites on the internet. They are set by us or by carefully selected third parties. They help us to understand the performance of our marketing activities and improve the relevance of the adverts that you see. These cookies will remain active for a maximum of four weeks after you have visited our website.

Blocking or restricting Cookies
You can stop Cookies being used on your device by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to block the deployment of all or some Cookies. Please note, if you use your browser settings to block Cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

The table below explains the cookies we use and why.


Cookie Cookie Name Purpose
Cookie Consent CookieConsent This will remember that you are happy to allow cookies on our website. This cookie is set to expire after 14 days if accepted, or 7 days if declined (no other GA Cookies are stored, if this is declined).
Google Analytics _ga Used to distinguish users and expires in 2 years
Google Analytics _gid Used to distinguish users and expires in 24 hours
Google Analytics _gat Used to throttle request rate and expires in 1 minute
Google Analytics -utma This allows Google Analytics to determine unique visitors to our site. The cookie expires 2 years from initial creation or from update of cookie
Google Analytics -utmb This cookie is used to establish and continue a user session on our site. The cookie will expire 30 minutes from initial creation of from update of the cookie
Google Analytics -utmc This is used in conjunction with the -utmb cookie to determine whether or not to establish a new session for the user. This cookie will expire once you have closed your session with our website (once you have closed your browser)
Google Analytics -utmz This cookie is used by google to store where a visitor came from (search engine, search keyword, link). This cookie will expire 6 months from its initial creation or from update of cookie.
AddThis _atuvs / _atuvc This is a third-party cookie from AddThis service and will expire in 2 years. This will share Standard Chartered content via social media share buttons. Also monitors user activity on the site and on other AddThis sites.
AddThis s_sq / ouid / notice_gdpr_prefs / s_nr / na_id / loc / s_fid / ssc / na_tc / notice_preferences / mus / gpw_e24 / sshs / s_cc / uvc / uid This is a third-party cookie from AddThis service. Up to 5 years expiry dates, with some session based. This will share Standard Chartered content via social media share buttons. Also monitors user activity on the site and on other AddThis sites.
Litespeed cache (Use only if Litespeed is enabled) _lscache_vary This cookie is used to store whether you are logged into the site and what your user role is. It us used to help improve site performance for logged in users. This cookie will expire after 2 days.
Vimeo Player (Use only if Vimeo Video player is present) player / vuid We embed videos from our official Vimeo channel. When you press play (or played automatically) Vimeo will drop third party cookies to enable the video to play and to collect analytics data such as how long a viewer has watched the video. These cookies do not track individuals.
Additional (do not add but please review) TBC Additional Tracking codes pulled from Vimeo, Youtube, or other 3rd parties injected via the sites widgets should be included here; the client will need to confirm this from their accounts such as Vimeo, Youtube etc.
This is not limited to the cookies loaded from GTM as tags, such as Facebook Pixel, Instagram, Hotjar etc which also should be detailed here