[1][2] Though lacking a truly strong domestic network in Britain, it was influential in the development of British colonial trade throughout the East of Suez.

Chartered Bank was keen to capitalise on the huge expansion of trade between India and China and other British possessions in Asia; and the handsome profits that could be made from financing the movement of goods from Europe to Far East.

Initially, the bank's business dealt specifically with large volume discounting and re-discounting of opium and cotton bills.

Transactions in the opium trade generated substantial profits for Chartered Bank.

The bank's traditional business was in cotton from Bombay, indigo and tea from Calcutta, rice from Burma, sugar from Java, tobacco from Sumatra, hemp from Manila and silk from Yokohama.

In 1923 the Great Kanto earthquake destroyed Chartered Bank's office in Yokohama, Japan, and killed a number of its staff.

Their UK office had an established sports ground in East Molesey in Surrey, which included an active rugby club.

In 1929 the house, together with the land on the other side of the river Mole, was laid out as a sports ground, firstly for the Distillers Company, and then for the construction group Trollope & Colls.