20 Dollars Standard Chartered Bank

Standard Chartered has issued Hong Kong dollars continuously since 1862, making it one of only three commercial banks still authorized to do so — an arrangement unique among major financial centers globally. The 2003 series marked Standard Chartered's shift to Hong Kong Note Printing Limited, the Shenzhen-adjacent facility majority-owned by the People's Bank of China, a commercially and politically pointed choice for a British-origin bank operating in post-handover Hong Kong.

P#291 notes from this year occasionally show minor ink set-off on the reverse — a known characteristic of the early HKNPL print runs for this series, worth checking on any example before cataloguing condition.