Taishin International Bank has launched a sustainable business model to provide seamless solutions for its unique client base.

To understand customer objectives better, Taishin International Bank has adopted a solution-based wealth advisory approach with clients at the heart of the process.

Sustainable financial products play a key role in furthering global climate goals. But their success demands a strategic approach that aligns with clients’ values and ethical preferences.

The significance of such a model in private banking is particularly relevant due to the unique needs and expectations of high-net-worth (HNW) clients as it could assist them with managing their portfolios effectively while reducing exposure to risks.

Taishin International Bank has strategically positioned itself for long-term growth by leveraging its expanding regional presence, upgrading its existing wealth management capabilities and providing solutions to its unique client base. The Taiwan-based bank has created a portfolio-based investment strategy curated to help customers enjoy their onshore and offshore product offerings.

To understand customer objectives better, Taishin International Bank has adopted a solution-based wealth advisory approach with clients at the heart of the process. The approach involves systematically examining clients’ assets across personal and business wealth and then structuring their portfolios by employing relevant financial products and services.

To better assist with wealth planning, the bank has a dedicated private banking department that works with clients using a team-based client service model. Clients are served by a dedicated adviser together with a full team of financial experts including investment, product and credit solution specialists. The specialist team is responsible for managing and facilitating the daily unique and complex service needs of the client base.

VALUE-ADDED SERVICES

In addition to custom-designed investment solutions, Taishin International Bank offers a series of personalised services such as tax, law, trust and estate planning solutions through commercial partnerships with qualified tax and law firms, as well as external providers that are onboarded following stringent background checks.

Adding to its holistic suite of products and service offerings are tailor-made credit solutions that provide clients with financial options that align closely with their goals, risk profiles and financial circumstances.
Taishin International Bank has strategically invested in the right resources and talent, and has witnessed a surge in the number of private clients as a result.

The bank’s total assets under management (AUM) were recorded at NTD$76bn ($2.4bn) at the end of 2022, a 225 per cent increase from the previous year’s NTD$23bn. With a customer-centric approach and long-term vision, Taishin International Bank will continue to invest in its products and services.
Taishin International Bank has won the Outstanding Private Bank for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Clients at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Quintet Private Bank is focused on enhancing client experience and providing improved digital solutions across markets.

Quintet Private Bank focuses on providing clients with proximity, agility and personalised service

Banks today are increasingly deploying unique strategies to deepen trust and build customer loyalty. Digital transformation is at the core of this change, with banks embracing new technologies to streamline operations, enhance security and cater to diverse customer needs.

To thrive and grow, banks have adopted customer-centric strategies across operations that are designed to better understand customer requirements and deliver products and solutions that meet these needs. This seamless access to insights, advice, products and services that are tailored to individual consumer needs has revolutionised service delivery in banking and led to greater productivity, increased revenues and lowered
overall expenses.

ROBUST DIGITAL SOLUTIONS

Luxembourg-based Quintet Private Bank has prioritised the provision of digital wealth planning solutions to its private banking clients for a more seamless and interactive client experience. Doing so has helped bolster the relationship between customers and the bank’s advisers while also helping curate personalised solutions.

Quintet Private Bank has developed an efficient workflow system that allows client advisers and financial intermediaries to systematically monitor client data and documentation pertaining to anti-money laundering and know-your-customer (KYC) activities.In 2022, the bank piloted in Belgium a digital wealth planning solution called the Richer Life Plan. Integrating this solution allows advisers to give clients an overview of their assets and create detailed simulations on the evolution of their wealth and the organisation of their inheritance, all of this on a digital and 24/7 accessible platform.

PERSONALISED APPROACH

A personalised approach in banking recognises that every client’s financial journey is unique, and Quintet Private Bank’s role is to be a dependable companion on that journey, helping customers realise their goals and secure their financial future.

The bank focuses on providing clients with proximity, agility and personalised service – staying in close, constant contact with them, responding quickly to their specific needs and offering tailor-made solutions that reflect their individual priorities and long-term goals.

ENSURING CSR OBJECTIVES

Quintet Private Bank’s commitment towards making meaningful contributions towards society is reflected in its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. While the bank has constantly worked on initiatives to strengthen its relationship with clients, it has also contributed resources, time and capital towards noteworthy initiatives including supporting charitable associations, encouraging employee volunteering and extending support across areas affected by conflict. Return overall, despite unstable geopolitics, challenging macroeconomic conditions and significant inflationary pressure, Quintet Private Bank’s strong position across local markets in Europe and the UK has helped it record solid financial results last year. In 2022, total group income rose to €524m ($571m), up 14 per cent compared to €460.8m ($502.5m) in 2021.

Quintet Private Bank has been recognised as the Highly Commended of Outstanding Global Private Bank in Europe at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Maybank Private Singapore is addressing client aspirations and ambitions through accessible and intuitive financial facilities and solutions.

Maybank Private aims to grow and establish its presence across London, the Middle East and Asia by offering clients a full suite of Islamic wealth management solutions.

In an increasingly interconnected financial landscape, Maybank Private Singapore is striving to differentiate itself from the competition and bring greater value to clients through its unique expertise, connections and opportunities.

The Malaysia-headquartered bank has a physical presence in all 10 Southeast Asian (Asean) countries. In 2013, Maybank established its private banking platform, Maybank Private, to complete its overall wealth management proposition. Ever since, Maybank Private has strategically expanded its business footprint globally.

With three onshore booking centres firmly established in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, the bank offers high-net-worth (HNW) clients across the region direct access to regional and global investment opportunities. It acts as a one-stop centre within Maybank Group to service the individual and business banking needs of HNW clients.

A strong presence in Southeast Asia allows Maybank Private to facilitate cross-border lending solutions in a seamless way. In addition, clients can benefit from investing anywhere within the region by pledging assets in their home country to invest in opportunities found in another.

ISLAMIC BANKING

Maybank continues its leadership in the Islamic private banking space, following the launch of Maybank Islamic Private and the rollout of several sharia-compliant products. These include the General Investment Account (GIA-i) – providing the potential to earn higher returns with indicative profit rates, Islamic Dual Currency Investments – short-term investments that offer higher returns and Islamic Auto-Callable Structured Products. In the near future, the bank aims to introduce several other solutions including its Islamic Legacy Planning solutions.

The total financial assets of Maybank Islamic Private Wealth reached RM5.5bn as of July 2023, with 2.5 per cent year-to-date growth since December 2022. Maybank Private aims to grow and establish its presence across London, the Middle East and Asia by offering clients a full suite of Islamic wealth management solutions.

FOCUS ON SUSTAINABILITY

With sustainability at the core of its operations, the bank aims to achieve long-term financial success and contribute to a more sustainable and equitable future for both its stakeholders and the wider global community. To achieve this, it has integrated environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into its direct lending, investments, services and advisory solutions.

At the same time, Maybank Private is also scaling up existing green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds/sukuk, project financing for green projects, ESG thematic funds, GSS loans, sustainability-linked trade products, sustainable supply chain financing platforms, sustainability-linked derivatives and structured products, as well as providing new green solutions via the community financial services and insurance sectors.

Maybank Private Singapore has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Private Bank in Southeast Asia award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

RBC Wealth Management has built a strong wealth planning portfolio and is committed to adaptable and inclusive wealth management.

RBC WM’s businesses in the UK and Asia are enjoying positive momentum as part of a focused international strategy targeting global HNW and UHNW families.

With a global network of professionals, RBC Wealth Management (RBC WM) serves affluent, high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-HNW (UHNW) clients from key operational hubs in Canada, the US, the British Isles and Asia.

A subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Canada, RBC WM provides a full suite of banking, investment, trust and other wealth management solutions.
Asset management products and services are provided directly and through RBC and third-party distributors to institutional and individual clients, through the RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM) business.

RBC WM boasts a client-first mindset and a comprehensive suite of solutions, including holistic wealth planning, investment management (advisory and discretionary), banking and credit, estate and trust, insurance, business succession planning, tax planning, and charitable giving.

The bank has solidified its position as a leading full-service private banking and wealth management business.

Its businesses in the US include RBC Wealth Management – US and City National Bank.

DIVERSE PORTFOLIO

In Canada, RBC WM is among the top private banks and wealth managers, with leading market share of assets. RBC Wealth Management – US is the seventh-largest full-service wealth advisory firm in the US as measured by assets under administration. The business continues to leverage the combined strengths of City National Bank, RBC Wealth Management – US and RBC Capital Markets to serve the needs of individuals, families and institutional clients and accelerate growth.

RBC WM’s businesses in the UK and Asia are enjoying positive momentum as part of a focused international strategy targeting global HNW and UHNW families. In the UK, RBC Brewin Dolphin is one of the largest wealth managers, with more than 30 regional offices, over 2,100 employees and a long history of providing exceptional service to all its private clients. With a comprehensive Asian wealth management platform in Singapore and Hong Kong supplemented by market-leading capabilities in North America and a strong presence in the UK, RBC WM is well positioned to meet the demands of a growing client base.

RBC Wealth Management has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Global Private Bank – North America award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Hana Bank is diversifying its portfolio and unlocking new avenues of business amid market fluctuations and economic challenges.

Hana Bank stands out in a competitive landscape through its differentiated target marketing and innovative business approaches.

In the ever-evolving landscape of global finance, institutions face the constant challenge of adapting to increased market volatility and heightened competition. Amid this, Hana Bank is strengthening its core business competencies and enhancing its market positioning.

The South Korean bank’s spectrum of services covers investment management, estate planning, corporate finance advice and specific wealth management products. Its strategy revolves around catering to diverse customer needs by offering tailored financial services, advice and
investable solutions for both affluent individuals and families.

STRATEGIC FOCUS

In 2022, Hana Bank directed its efforts towards comprehensive and dedicated portfolio management, with a strong customer-centric approach.
Recognising the need to navigate market fluctuations, the bank proactively monitored investment products.

During periods of heightened volatility, such as downturns in the equity and bond markets, the bank suggested portfolio rebalancing strategies on a monthly basis. This approach aimed to ensure customer portfolios were resilient and aligned with their risk preferences, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Despite the adverse economic conditions resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic, Hana Bank increased the total assets under management (AUM) in its private banking business from about $52.2bn in 2021 to $54.5bn by the end of 2022.

NEW FUNDS

The driving force behind this achievement was the infusion of new funds into various financial products, including savings, time deposits, equitylinked term (ELT) products and specified money in trust. In addition, interest rate hikes played a pivotal role in incentivising customers to channel their investments into these avenues.

Hana Bank has also established a digital wealth management platform that offers customers personalised services driven by artificial intelligence. This transformation has enabled the bank to deliver a seamless and tailored experience across the customer lifecycle. The bank has diversified its portfolio by focusing on art enthusiasts and investment products related to art, with membership growing from 650 at the end of 2022 to 760 by March 2023.

ART BANKING

Hana Bank has expanded into art banking through strategic alliances that have allowed customers to co-own fractionalised ownership interests in investment-grade blue-chip artwork. It also launched a storage service for its customers – H.Art1 – in November 2022. This service utilises public space to exhibit artwork of rising and famed artists and store the art securely.

Hana Bank has been highly commended as the Outstanding Private Bank – North Asia award at the Private Banker International Global Wealth Awards 2023. Additionally, two senior executives at the bank – Younghee Park and Hojeong Choi – have won Outstanding Private Banker – Regional Player awards.

Hojeong Choi’s remarkable achievement of winning the Outstanding Private Banker Award is a testament to her exceptional capabilities and dedication.

With agile management skills, Choi has overseen an estimated $169m in assets under management (AUM) as of May 2023, achieving a commendable 60 per cent growth in AUM. Over the past three and a half years, her efforts have led to an increased amount of about $64m, a
HOJEONG CHOI | HANA BANK

Outstanding Private Banker Award notable achievement that anticipates an annual operating income exceeding $4.5m. Choi’s capacity to generate profits through transaction-related foreign exchange and overseas investments is particularly noteworthy. Her tenure at KEB Hana Bank, a subsidiary of Hana Bank, has resulted in a growth of about $75m in AUM for high-net-worth individuals over the past three years.

Choi’s advisory services tailored to Korean residents transacting with Hana Bank’s overseas branches have attracted about $6m in imported overseas investment. Her systematic asset management across Hana Financial Group’s global network showcases her dedication to providing clients with optimal solutions for overseas investments. Choi’s recognition is well-deserved and a testament to her exceptional skills and contributions to the field.

YOUNGHEE PARK | HANA BANK Outstanding Private Banker Award Younghee Park’s success in being honoured with the Outstanding Private Banker Award is a reflection of her distinct strengths in the field of private banking.

She has navigated assets worth about $235m by managing investment portfolios, achieving a growth of 95 per cent within a year and a half. This growth was a result of adept management of investment tools such as bonds, foreign fixed income and share sales.

Park’s expertise further extends to nurturing relationships with notable clients, including one of South Korea’s leading e-commerce companies. She has demonstrated a deep understanding of corporate financial needs, resulting in the successful management of initial public offerings (IPOs) and an influx of about $75m. Additionally, her collaborative approach has attracted investments totalling about $23m through tailored services.

Park’s approach to portfolio management and expert grasp of corporate services have earned her this well-deserved recognition.

Kasikornbank delivers robust wealth management services under tailor-made operational plans.

Kasikornbank provides investment advisory services in diverse aspects of businesses and activities outside capital markets, focusing on efficiency enhancement and sustainable growth.

Wealth management services provide the expertise and guidance needed to navigate the complexities of managing wealth across borders, ensuring financial security and success on a global scale.

Thailand-based Kasikornbank’s private banking arm integrates expertise in wealth management from Lombard Odier, one of the oldest boutique private banking service providers in Geneva, Switzerland.

The bank provides family health planning services, helping clients establish a wealth framework for future generations. With the assistance of in-house relationship managers, families are guided and provided with the resources needed to achieve their personal goals and support generations to come. The solutions provided cover succession planning, family risk management planning and asset holder and structure planning.

ENSURING EFFICIENCY

Kasikornbank’s operations are designed to provide comprehensive advisory services to assist clients in real estate portfolio management, with the aim of ensuring efficiency and achieving financial goals in the short and long term, including management, real estate utilisation and land loans for investment.

Additionally, the bank provides investment advisory services in diverse aspects of businesses and activities outside capital markets, focusing on efficiency enhancement and sustainable growth. One of its key investment strategies is risk-based allocation, which involves using risk-based asset allocation to compare various asset classes in designing portfolios and adjusting investment proportions.

SUSTAINABLE APPROACH

Aside from sustainability and sharing, S-Curve is one of the three core strategies of Kasikorn Private Banking that largely focuses on clients attaining their financial objectives. This could be achieved through the pursuit of new investment opportunities, seeking sustainable solutions for individual portfolios, wealth management and global welfare (sustainability), and considering those instrumental in fostering mutual growth (sharing).

These guidelines can be restructured to accommodate changing market scenarios and client needs. By implementing such principles, Kasikornbank seeks to not only drive its business but also create an environment where clients can prosper without having to compromise.

Kasikornbank has been awarded Outstanding Private Bank for Growth Strategy at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Mashreq Private Banking is committed to strategic sustainable development, client-centric solutions and a digital-first approach.

Offering end-to-end solutions for a range of investment products, Mashreq has a robust and integrated wealth management platform in place.

The banking industry is constantly undergoing rapid transformation as a result of evolving customer expectations and rapid advancements in digital innovation. While embracing this change is crucial, banks with a focus on customer journeys at the forefront of their operations are optimally leveraging technological solutions to offer clients access to a holistic suite of products and services in the most intuitive and seamless manner.

To foster better relationships, meet changing customer needs and offer a personalised experience that transcends traditional banking strategies, banks are introducing diverse models with unique solutions to help customers adapt.

SMART INVESTMENTS

UAE-based bank Mashreq provides clients with a team-based approach to help them manage and grow their wealth under the guidance of a dedicated team of experts and advisory specialists. The bank offers a carefully curated selection of investment and wealth management solutions that cover diverse client requirements.

Mashreq’s experts assist clients in their decision-making process, whether it involves taking mortgages against UAE properties, equity release or providing lease rental discounts along with a range of deposit and certificate of deposit (CD) products. Clients seeking to invest offshore can take advantage of the bank’s open architecture investment platforms to access local and international equities, margin trading, and structured solutions that help them access markets that are otherwise inaccessible.

DIGITAL-FIRST APPROACH

Banks today are embracing digital solutions to improve productivity, customer experience and design personalised products that can be accessed through multiple channels. Using its unique digital platform, Mashreq’s clients can trade equities, foreign currencies and commodities that can be chosen from thousands of securities across multiple exchanges.

Clients also have access to a range of technical analysis and charting tools that can empower them to make relevant investment and trading decisions. Offering end-to-end solutions for a range of investment products, the bank has an integrated wealth management platform that allows customers to navigate all financial tasks efficiently.

To meet the evolving needs of their clients, financial institutions including Mashreq are moving towards a more focused and strategic customer-centric model, enabling a seamless and consistent customer experience across all touchpoints.

Mashreq has set up new applications on flexible, secure and elastic cloud infrastructure, which is enabling centralisation and storage of large amounts of data while older applications are being migrated to the cloud via development operations (DevOps) and microservices architecture.

ESG GOALS

Incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies into banking operations is becoming increasingly important to manage risk, enhance reputation, meet regulatory requirements and drive innovation. In an effort to minimise waste, conserve resources and adopt eco-friendly practices, Mashreq has completely digitised its business operations and continues to devise solutions to eliminate all manual processes.

The bank’s commitment to strategic sustainable development is reflected in its sustainability framework, which focuses on enabling a low-carbon transition and environmental stewardship, empowering employees and communities, incorporating responsible and sustainable practices throughout the organisation, and exceeding customer expectations.

Mashreq Private Banking has won the Outstanding Private Bank in the Middle East trophy at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

UBS is redefining customer experience with a suite of financial services and digital solutions.

The UBS Circle One platform brings together the best of the UBS ecosystem and connects clients to experts, thought leaders and actionable ideas around the world.

The banking industry is constantly working towards creating superior value for clients, shareholders and employees. While projecting strong financial results remains the key objective of these institutions, they are gradually adopting a comprehensive approach that balances innovation, social responsibility and connecting people, creating a more inclusive and better world.

To help clients better achieve their financial objectives, Switzerland-headquartered bank UBS has introduced WE.UBS, a highly interactive platform that offers clients an innovative, digital service model with proactive financial planning based on big data and chief investment office (CIO) views.

INTERACTIVE PLATFORMS

The platform provides both local and global investment solutions through a robust selection process, dedicated investor education and 24-hour tracking based on market developments.

Adding to the bank’s digital initiatives is the launch of UBS Circle One, a platform that brings together the best of the UBS ecosystem and connects clients to experts, thought leaders and actionable ideas around the world. This is facilitated through the provision of easily digestible digital content on a daily and weekly basis, complementing traditional investment reports and physical events.

Last year, UBS also closed its first $50m tokenised debt transaction for Asia-Pacific (APAC) investors using blockchain, a technology often utilised to make issuing securities more efficient.

HOLISTIC SERVICES

To provide seamless access to its investment banking and wealth management capabilities, in 2022 the bank established the Global Family & Institutional Wealth (GFIW) division, which houses its global family office (GFO) unit as well its global markets, lending, prime brokerage and private markets capabilities all under one roof. The GFIW One Bank business model has been designed for entrepreneurs, especially those in the new economy sector, as a strategic growth driver in the APAC region.

The bank’s holistic services go beyond corporate banking and investment solutions to include wealth planning, family office advisory and philanthropy services. Its family adviser teams in Hong Kong and Singapore provide insights, comprehensive advice and execution services to clients, helping them set up family offices in Asia with supporting policies and incentives from both governments.

CORPORATE PHILANTHROPY

The bank’s philanthropic arm, the UBS Optimus Foundation, has partnered with clients to deliver solutions for various social and environmental issues, and is the only foundation linked to a global wealth manager with philanthropy experts. The bank has further expanded its charitable efforts by venturing into other areas of social impact, launching a new UBS Optimus Foundation entity that drives initiatives in the areas of healthcare, education and child protection systems as well as tackling environmental degradation and climate change. With the support of its clients, the foundation is supporting more than 50 programmes in Southeast Asia and 30 programmes in Greater China.

UBS has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Global Private Bank in Asia-Pacific award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Chinabank is deploying processes and systems that address the needs of the next generation of affluent clients.

Chinabank’s dedicated relationship managers, together with the support of wealth associates, ensure seamless client servicing through better pricing and service delivery.

Banking institutions are constantly trying to keep up with the changing times and introducing solutions that could help clients better preserve their wealth through robust financial planning, diversified investment options and unique personalised experiences.

Chinabank offers highly personalised services that address the financial goals of its affluent client base through a needs-based strategy grounded on a clear understanding of their unique requirements..

DEDICATED TEAM

This tailored approach to banking is provided by dedicated relationship managers who review client investment portfolios holistically and provide solutions based on their financial goals and risk appetite.

The managers, together with the support of wealth associates, ensure seamless client servicing through better pricing and service delivery. Besides personal banking requirements, clients are encouraged to grow their business through loan facilities provided by the bank’s commercial banking division.

With need-based solutions at the core of Chinabank’s strategic objectives, clients have access to a wide range of investment products such as bonds, equities, hybrid securities, derivatives, pooled funds and other investment alternatives, along with personalised financial advice and investment tools that assist in maximising returns. Always having clients’ best interests in mind, the bank also provides them access to fiduciary services for unbiased advice on managing their finances.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

To meet changing customer expectations, and improve efficiency and productivity, Chinabank is undergoing rapid digital transformation to drive its business and enhance customer experience. In the face of increased competition, the bank is introducing unique solutions and adopting digital products. These digitisation efforts cover several different products offered by the bank, including wealth management systems, processes and product offerings to address the needs of the next generation of affluent clients while remaining true to the values that have made Chinabank a trusted partner over the past century.

Chinabank has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Wealth Management Service for the Affluent award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Emirates NBD Private Banking offers astute wealth management solutions, from investment advisory to generational wealth transfer.

Emirates NBD offers a concierge-based online ordering platform called ‘Moments of Delight’, which offers several money-cannot-buy lifestyle and fine dining experiences for elite clients.

With private banking solutions catering to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-HNW individuals, UAE-based Emirates NBD offers families and select institutions diverse investment advisory and wealth management solutions through its network of relationship managers (RMs) and certified investment advisors across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Singapore. The private bank follows a global relationship manager (GRM) framework for offshore accounts with full capabilities across its booking centres.

Emirates NBD Private Banking offers clients personalised advice at the various stages of investment decision-making by understanding their investment objectives and building suitable portfolios to meet their needs. The bank’s advisory service places clients at the heart of decision-making, offering diverse investment strategies while utilising an open architecture product bringing them to life.

UNDERSTANDING THE CLIENT

Emirates NBD’s approach to advising clients on their investments follows a systematic process involving a thorough understanding of their needs, and a portfolio constructed with carefully selected products, periodic reporting and rebalancing.

The bank offers several asset allocation frameworks that can deliver sustainable returns with limited potential downside. While strategic asset allocation is the backbone of the bank’s investment solutions, short-term investment advice is provided in the form of tactical asset allocation calls that capture market inefficiencies and tilt the portfolio exposure towards asset classes, potentially offering higher returns in a shorter time frame.

The third layer of expertise is portfolio population, involving the creation of a well-diversified portfolio overseeing funds, structured products and alternative investments that could provide clients with better returns on their investments.

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC APPROACH

With customer satisfaction at the core of its operations, Emirates NBD offers a concierge-based online ordering platform called ‘Moments of Delight’, which offers several money-cannot-buy lifestyle and fine dining experiences for its elite clients.

In addition, the bank has an elite network of partnerships with leading lifestyle and luxury brands showcasing their new product lines and services. These are offered to elite clients as exclusive ‘first-view opportunities’ before becoming available to the general public.

Emirates NBD’s social strategy aligns with the UN’s sustainable development goals and the UAE’s vision to be a sustainable knowledge-based economy. Over the years, the bank’s sustainable investment principles have been naturally embedded into its operations, especially when building portfolios and selecting issuers, companies and funds that are suitable for the long-term goals of clients, who are trans-generational.

Emirates NBD Private Banking has won the Outstanding NRI/Global Indians Offering award and is highly commended as the Most Effective Investment Service Offering at the Private Banker International Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Lombard International Assurance is driving innovation and seeking to support clients integrate ESG priorities with investment options.

Lombard International Assurance has focused on driving innovation in every aspect of its business operations, including the development and inclusion of digital capabilities.

Unit-Linked life insurance, also known as Wealth Assurance or Private Placement Life Insurance (PPLI), is an established and internationally recognised tool for wealth preservation, international mobility and asset protection.

Sitting at the crossroad of insurance, asset management and private banking, this solution provides access to alternative investments such as private equity, and is adaptable to supporting the various wealth planning needs of clients. As such, its robustness and flexibility make it highly complementary to other wealth management solutions.

Based out of Luxembourg, Lombard International Assurance provides customised insurance-based solutions to help individuals and institutions with tools that can be tailored to support financial planning.

DIGITAL EXCELLENCE

Client and partner needs are continuously evolving in this age of constant digital change and transformation. To meet these ever sophisticated needs, Lombard International Assurance has focused on driving innovation within its business operations, including the development and inclusion of digital capabilities designed to provide enhance services and solutions.

To better serve its intermediary partners and clients, the international wealth solutions provider has designed a robust digital infrastructure to provide the right level of connectivity while maximising operational efficiency. Among the provider’s digital innovations is the Connect platform that enables online, secure, and compliant contract management including client and partner queries. From a sales perspective, digital onboarding, and servicing platforms, coupled with the availability of online transaction tools, represent important growth levers aligned with partner needs. The past few years have seen a demonstrable change in the demands of wealthy individuals and families as they navigate an uncertain global economy. Driven by geopolitical instability, a changing market and macroeconomic dynamics, Lombard International Assurance has pledged to help high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-HNW families and institutions navigate these evolving landscapes.

As a result, the provider offers custom-designed cross-border insurance-based wealth, estate and succession planning solutions for upper affluent, HNW and ultra-HNW individuals, families and institutions. While HNW families re-evaluate their existing planning and with more than $15tn in wealth set to transition globally by 2030, early planning becomes a necessity in the face of the unknown. Lombard International Assurance provides flexibility and choice to partners and clients, and delivers tailored wealth solutions that are deep-rooted in local knowledge.

SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENTS

The financial services industry, like several others, is involved in defining and applying environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles to create more sustainable investment portfolios. By defining and selecting their own investment strategy, partners and clients at Lombard International Assurance can proactively activate their wealth as a tool to achieve both financial and non-financial goals.

Lombard International Assurance has won Best Insurance-based Wealth Solutions award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Krungsri is continuing its client-centric strategy across investment processes by providing open architecture wealth solutions to clients.

Krungsri has introduced the ONE Krungsri Investment View, which offers investment insights, research and strategies from Krungsri professionals.

With an aim of providing sustainable business solutions to its clients, Thailand’s Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri) has introduced a new segment called Krungsri Private Banking. Curated by a team of professional advisers, the segment focuses on delivering comprehensive investment advisory services and offering a balanced perspective of local and global investments. Krungsri Private Banking is designed for the bank’s top-tier customers having an asset-under-management (AUM) of THB50m ($1.5m) or higher.

VALUE PROPOSITIONS

As Thailand’s fifth-largest universal bank, Krungsri continues to adopt a client-centric strategy across its investment processes by providing open architecture wealth solutions that help clients monitor their investments and make informed decisions. Additionally, the Krungsri Investment Intelligence provides professional investment advisory services with a long-term asset allocation approach. This is handled by a team of professional investment strategists and consultants.

Krungsri has also partnered with an investment, advisory and wealth management solutions provider, US-based BlackRock, to give clients access to investment tools.

Constantly working to enhance client support and providing a holistic understanding of investments, the bank has introduced the ONE Krungsri Investment View. This platform offers a wealth of expertise such as investment insights, research and strategies from Krungsri professionals. This platform covers a range of areas such as economics, currencies and global financial markets.

ROBUST OUTCOMES

In order to cater to the private banking segment, Krungsri has launched several new products in the past year. These include foreign currency deposits, direct offshore mutual funds, direct offshore stock trading, US dollar-denominated bonds and US dollar-structured notes.

Additionally, the bank has initiated the launch of three private equity funds, strategically timed to yield positive returns for 2022. These funds outperformed both the global private equity sector (which experienced a decline of -2.7 per cent) and the developed market equity (which saw a decline of -17.7 per cent). Over the last three years, the proportion of private banking clients has increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16 per cent, while the compound value (CV) of deposits, mutual funds and bancassurance has seen a CAGR of +149 per cent during the same period.

Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri) has won the Launch of the Year award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Julius Baer has a differentiating business model focused on wealthy clients, underpinned by an engagement-led sustainability strategy.

To serve its clients better, Julius Baer has upgraded its service model and delivery, and introduced new touchpoints and solutions reshaping the way operations are conducted.

Financial institutions are constantly re-evaluating their strategies to include what works best for their customers and business. Striving to keep empathy and agility at the core of its operations, banks are becoming more transparent with clients, thus driving their retention and ensuring business longevity.

When Swiss wealth management bank Julius Baer presented its updated strategy for 2023-2025, the bank’s CEO Philipp Rickenbacher, commented: “We are initiating a new phase of profitable growth, building on the transformation we pursued successfully since 2020. Our client-centric business model and our dedicated focus on high and ultra-high net worth clients put us in a strong position to shape our future.”

TRANSFORMING OPERATIONS

With a structural efficiency programme in place, Julius Baer was able to reduce costs by CHF200m ($227m) by the end of 2021, demonstrating that the bank’s financial strength is a prerequisite for the successful implementation of its business strategies.

The greatest impact on Julius Baer’s operations has come from the introduction of value-based pricing for its services. Over the past three years, the bank has repriced more than 20,000 accounts, working closely with clients to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes.

This significantly bolstered the bank’s revenue generation capability for future sustainability.

To strengthen its operations, Julius Baer has restructured its legal entity portfolio and made necessary upgrades to the business wherever required. Working towards further enhancing its value proposition, the bank has reviewed the requirements of high- and ultra-high-net-worth clients and designed solutions to match their requirements. Over the course of the past financial year, Julius Baer reassessed its market strategies, ensuring the largest investments were allotted to areas with the highest strategic and profit potential, building on local critical mass. This has set the foundation for Julius Baer’s next growth cycle, where the bank aims to scale at a global and local level, while maintaining a well-diversified international footprint.

To serve its clients better, the bank has upgraded its service model and delivery, and introduced new touchpoints and solutions reshaping the way operations are conducted.

SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES

With sustainability being a key part of its client value proposition, Julius Baer has been taking proactive measures to achieve its net-zero goals by the end of 2030 as part of its climate strategy. Encouraging positive impact and sustainable practices, the bank aims to broaden responsible and sustainable investment offerings, integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles into its risk management framework, and roll out ESG client reporting, including climate metrics, globally.

By accelerating investments in technology and people, Julius Baer has upgraded its digital channels to include new e-banking, content distribution and digital client onboarding solutions. Working towards its strategy of being the most digital bank for relationship managers, the bank has invested in digital tools including an advisory suite and mandate solution designer, crucial in helping scale the business in a flexible, yet regulatory-compliant way.

Julius Baer has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Global Private Bank Global trophy at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

LGT Private Banking supports clients in every step of their philanthropic journey.

If clients are looking to maximise their philanthropic impact, we’re there to support them throughout their entire philanthropic journey.
~ Nina Hoas, LGT Private Banking

Thinking and acting for the long term is in the DNA of the Princely House of Liechtenstein and is one of the reasons the family has been involved in various charitable causes for centuries. These values are closely reflected in the convictions and strategies of LGT Private Banking.

For over 15 years, the private bank has placed a clear focus on philanthropy in order to help ensure a better tomorrow for society and the environment, and to support clients in maximising their positive impact in this area.

AMPLIFYING IMPACT

Over the centuries, philanthropic principles and approaches have continuously evolved. Unlike in the past, there is now a much greater emphasis on making philanthropic commitments sustainable and scalable in order to amplify their positive impact. In other words, the aim today is not just to do good, but to achieve the best possible outcome with the resources available, which can include experience, expertise and partnerships.

This entrepreneurial approach is one of LGT’s guiding principles in its commitments to society and the environment. The bank’s owner, the Princely House of Liechtenstein, places great importance on developing and aligning its philanthropic activities in such a way that they effectively and efficiently contribute to positive and sustainable change.

It was against this backdrop that LGT established the LGT Venture Philanthropy Foundation in 2007. In addition, with its philanthropy advisory offering, LGT supports clients in every step of their philanthropic journey – from defining their underlying values and areas of engagement to developing a strategy and implementing it successfully.

DRIVING CHANGE

“If you have a medical problem, you go to a doctor and if you have legal issues, you talk to a lawyer,” says Nina Hoas, head of LGT’s philanthropy advisory division. “So if clients are looking to maximise their philanthropic impact, we’re there to support them throughout their entire philanthropic journey, which often spans generations.

This process begins, Hoas explains, with developing a vision and a concrete mission. “Using that as a basis, we then build a philanthropic strategy with them and together define a clear process for achieving long-term impact.”

But in addition to being beneficial for individuals who are new to philanthropy, the advice provided by LGT’s philanthropy advisory team can also help philanthropists who have been working in the field for many years. “Experienced philanthropists also want to talk to experts with an in-depth knowledge of relevant topics, and want to learn about new opportunities in philanthropy,” says Hoas. There is no lack of compassion and commitment in today’s world. But the sheer complexity of social and environmental problems can make it difficult to effect positive change. “There are so many people who have the best intentions but who don’t achieve the impact and effect they are striving for,” says Hoas.

“This might be due to hierarchies, or a lack of coordination within the family. Or it could be the result of a lack of strategy, or because they’re simply too far removed from the problem. I’m convinced that strategic philanthropy is the key to lasting change.”

LGT Private Banking has won the Outstanding Philanthropy Offering award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Standard Bank is streamlining its portfolio and enhancing the client experience through digital innovation and global accessibility.

Standard Bank provides banking advisers with real-time, accurate client information, enabling them to proactively deliver insights and recognise challenges and opportunities as they arise.

With a diverse regional presence spanning 88 offices across 17 countries, Standard Bank partners with Africa’s affluent and high-net-worth (HNW) individuals, helping them build, grow, manage and preserve generational wealth of their families.

Anchored on its 160 year legacy of driving Africa’s growth, the bank’s value proposition is designed to identify unique client requirements and offer tailored and integrated solutions that are delivered through a superior client experience. As a purpose-led, client-driven private bank, Standard Bank’s business model is structured to strategically address clients’ onshore and offshore banking requirements.

A team of experts focuses on developing intelligent relationships with clients by creating insight-led experiences that are tailored according to each individual and their family’s ambitions and financial motivations.

DIGITAL STRATEGY

Standard Bank’s international footprint, combined with innovative digital technology that facilitates engagement across multiple platforms, enables clients to leverage the expertise, tools and diversification required to create a globally effective wealth strategy.

A key strategy of their international citizenry is their next generation academic programme that supports African children to study in renowned global universities. Additionally, emigrants and non-residents have also been identified as key growth drivers, with outcomes designed to assist them even when outside the country.

Through the innovation and adoption of a suite of data-led, internal digital tools, Standard Bank has created a multi-channel engagement strategy that provides banking advisers with real-time, accurate client information, enabling them to proactively deliver insights and recognise challenges and opportunities as they arise.

WEALTH MANAGEMENT

Designed to meet the growing need for digital transformation across financial processes, Standard Bank’s wealth management onboarding tool (WMO) enables wealth managers and wealth administrators to efficiently create investment proposals and instructions incorporating client information obtained from various sources. This helps in streamlining the end-to-end processes and in reducing the turnaround time.

The bank’s wealth management app ‘My360’ allows advisers to view client information in real-time with access to their net value assets (NAV), asset allocation and liabilities. The application includes a function that enables a holistic view of clients’ assets including those held in trust and investment holding companies.

Additionally, the bank’s international investment and payments application ‘Shyft’ has been incorporated into the bank’s operations, enhancing client experience through global accessibility. The app has been developed for clients looking for a secure and self-driven offshore investment experience.

Standard Bank’s focus on client-centric solutions has helped it forge lifelong partnerships with clients and enabled positive results across its financial outcomes. Additionally, the bank has witnessed a 7 per cent growth in clients and an 8 per cent increase in assets under management (AUM).

Standard Bank South Africa has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Global Private Bank in Africa award at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023. It has also been Highly Commended for Best Family Office and Outstanding Wealth Management Technology Initiative-Back Office.

Société Générale supports clients in their banking journey with responsible and innovative financial solutions.

Société Générale Private Banking has developed fluid and transparent experiences for its customers to help them bank easily and independently, using integrated and efficient processes.

Société Générale Private Banking (SGPB) is the wealth management arm of French lender Société Générale and offers wealth management solutions and fiduciary services to entrepreneurs and high-net-worth-individuals (HNWI). Adopting a holistic approach to wealth management, the bank takes into consideration each client’s personal requirements and advises on the most suitable asset allocation.

SGPB has developed fluid and transparent experiences for its customers to help them bank easily and independently, using integrated and efficient processes. Solutions include the launch of Mon Patrimoine (My Wealth), an application developed with and for private banking clients in France. Using a single internet and mobile interface, the product offers customers a holistic view of their entire portfolio, regardless of whether it is housed at Société Générale or not.

DIGITAL INNOVATION

Additionally, the bank has developed Synoe, an in-house solution based on an innovative algorithm and natural language technology that enables investment advice to be digitally and automatically sent to eligible clients depending on their requirements, investor profile and their targeted investment portfolios. Meanwhile, developed in collaboration with clients, the Coach Financier application has been exclusively designed for clients that are looking to make their own investment decisions.

With customer-centric solutions defining the bank’s overall objectives, SGPB’s management team comes equipped with the resources to provide clients with results that match their strategy, market knowledge and risk profile. Customers can take advantage of personalised and diversified allocation across all asset classes, long-term monitoring of their investments and further benefit from the bank’s environmental and societal convictions. Dedicated wealth engineers assess the requirements of each HNWI and how to best achieve their goals. Société Générale delivers highly targeted solutions by matching a tailored strategy to the needs of every client.

CORPORATE PHILANTHROPHY

One of SGPB’s core missions is to inspire clients and help them build a meaningful and impactful philanthropy strategy for themselves and their family. Financial experts lead clients in every step of their philanthropic journey, identifying and nurturing their willingness to give back, crafting a tailor-made strategy, building the governance, involving all the generations within the family, and setting metrics to measure the impact of their generosity.

To help its clients donate to a good cause before or after their demise, SGPB has created 29 Haussmann, a foundation run under the aegis of Fondation de France. The organisation supports the implementation of solidarity projects devoted to children and young people and allows clients to benefit from dual expertise in wealth engineering and societal expertise.

Société Générale Private Banking has been recognised as the winner of the Outstanding Global Private Bank in Europe award and has been Highly Commended in the Outstanding Philanthropy Offering category at the Private Banker International Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Bradesco Global Private Bank is curating customised solutions to manage, protect and improve clients’ wealth.

Adhering to its client-centric strategy enabled BGPB to achieve 68 per cent growth compared to the pre-pandemic period.

With a strong national and international presence, Brazil’s Bradesco Global Private Bank (BGPB) works closely with its clients to preserve and manage their family wealth across generations and offer wealth strategies compatible with their personal needs and risk profile.

To cater to the unique requirements of its clients, the bank has established a comprehensive wealth management framework covering a range of assets, both easily accessible and less liquid, and provides clients with ideal investment options and structures for preserving family wealth.

Clients have access to a complete, open and differentiated platform of local and international investments, including exclusive funds. Backed by a skilled team of advisers and economists, BGPB provides access to several business solutions including investment banking, credit, insurance, brokerage and pension funds.

CLIENT-CENTRIC APPROACH

Clients play a vital role in shaping BGPB’s strategy. Tailoring its approach to match the needs, life stages and aspirations of its clients, the bank offers assistance in asset management and financial advice.

Adhering to this strategy enabled the bank to grow its assets under management (AUM) 59 per cent between 2022 and 2019 (pre-pandemic), and 107 per cent between 2018 and 2022. As a result, in 2023, BGBP increased its market share by a total of 3.8 percentage points against 2018. Over the past year, the number of customers increased by 8 per cent, proving the bank’s goal to devise customer-centric strategies.

ROBUST LEADERSHIP

BGPB has been transforming its service model to provide stronger representation in management versus operations. Over the past two years, 17 per cent of the bank’s positions were transformed into management, reaching 81 per cent of personnel dedicated exclusively to the business.

By embracing an inclusive model of approach, BGPB has effectively drawn in and retained talent throughout the years. The global private banking team in particular has experienced a notable growth of 107 per cent in the past five years and continues to invest in strategies and solutions that differentiate itself from its peers.

Bradesco Global Private Bank has been Highly Commended in the Outstanding Global Private Bank in Latin America category at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Itaú Private Bank is nurturing customer relationships through enhanced transparency and strategic investments.

Itaú Private Bank has combined access to the best consolidated financial services offered in Latin America with an open investment platform that gives clients access to investment products from the best houses in the market, enhanced by expert curation and support.

Customer-centric solutions are essential in banking as they place customers at the core of all operations and decision-making processes. By focusing on enhancing the customer experience, banks can gain the trust and loyalty of their customers, forging relations that can last a lifetime. Furthermore, in an age of rapid technological innovation and increasing competition, banks are making it a priority to adapt and innovate in order to stay relevant and achieve long-term success.

CUSTOMISED BUSINESS MODEL

Brazil-headquartered Itaú Private Bank works alongside clients, helping them define their investment goals, structure a portfolio aimed at producing excellent returns and find solutions for the perpetuation of legacies across generations. Offering a diverse line-up of investment and advisory services in estate planning, taxes, family and corporate governance, the bank’s strategy is based on providing customised, conventional and non-traditional banking solutions, reflecting the overall interests of clients.

Itaú Private Bank is consistently working towards providing a diverse ecosystem of services and products, offering global services to customers, strengthening partnerships, enhancing its technology platform and further expanding operations within and outside Brazil. To do this, the bank has combined access to its consolidated financial services offered in Latin America, including Itaú BBA, Itaú Asset Management and Itaú Banking, with an open investment platform that gives clients access to investment products from the reputable institutions in the market, enhanced by expert curation and support.

STRENGTHENING RELATIONSHIPS

Over the years, Itaú Private Bank has successfully developed a reputation for its strength, flexibility and commitment to transparency, which have been nurtured through extensive customer relationships, investments in cutting-edge technology and comprehensive organisational training.

To connect with a larger global Brazilian audience, regardless of where the onshore or offshore investments or non-investment products are made, the bank provides customers with the convenience of a “one-stop shop”. In Brazil, the bank aims to continue working on significant environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives across various fronts, including tailored product offerings and exclusive events for affluent clients.

Additionally, to address the growing contribution of the agribusiness sector to Brazil’s GDP, Itaú Private Bank aims to collaborate with other segments of its parent group, such as Banco Itaú BBA, to establish a coverage model in other regions in Brazil. This model will primarily target rural producers, entrepreneurs and investors interested in the sector, offering them a range of global investment and credit products.

Itaú Private Bank has access to the leading consolidated financial services offered in Latin America and an open investment platform that gives clients access to investment products from the best houses in the market, enhanced by expert curation and support.

Itaú Private Bank has been recognised as the winner of the Most Effective Investment Offering award and Outstanding Global Private Bank in Latin America at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2023.

Stand-first: A new service that allows retail investors in Thailand to track and subscribe more easily to a bond via the Debenture and Equity on Krungsri Mobile Application (KMA) is bringing new digital investment opportunities to the masses. Representing, Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri), it won the Best Next-Generation Offering at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022. The achievement has reflected the bank’s commitment to serving customers which is in alignment with Krungsri’s 2022 business direction that places key focus on digital and innovation in order to create beyond tech customer experience.

The Debenture and Equity end-to-end offering on KMA allows customers to invest in well-known companies for a long-term return on their bond in an easy, fast and trackable way via the KMA app without having to visit a branch, which was important during Covid-19 induced lockdowns. It enables readiness and pre-application form-filling for what are often limited subscription offerings only available to those that move fast.

Retail investors put their capital into six well-known firms last year via the app, including the initial public offering (IPO) for loan provider, Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited. Within five days of their IPO, the bank’s figures showed that 97% of its subscribers were from KMA app, whereas only 3% of transactions emanated from Krungsri’s branches.

Key features of the next-generation digital offering include an enhanced customer experience (CX), rehearsal testing, auto error detection and subscription options before a bond debuts. The app means:

On the day before an IPO date, customers can pre-access the Debenture and Equity menu on KMA to create their customer profile and complete online suitability assessment test to classify the type of investor they are. This shortens the process on the IPO date and helps in case popular bonds sell out in a short time period, as they tend to do so if the company’s credit rating is good.

On the IPO date itself, a real-time function is available to subscribe to a bond via a prepopulated electronic form that can automatically be linked to withdraw funds from a Krungsri savings account, or an electronic savings account linked on KMA, so no-one misses out. Customers also have a choice to receive a Debenture Certificate by filling in KMA, cutting paper waste.

The subscription attempt will be communicated to customers via a KMA app message/email within a second to acknowledge the completion of the bond subscription, with the allocated share amount. In case the allocated share is lower than the requested subscription, KMA app will process auto refunding instantly.

These digital features overcome the limitations of the traditional retail manner of debenture bond investing whereby customers previously had to visit a branch during office hours on the IPO date, meaning many missed out or were driven to alternative providers. Other benefits of Debenture and Equity on KMA app include:

Smooth, quick, and convenient end-to-end workflows, enhancing CX.

Lower cost to serve whereby benefits also accrue to the bank.

Future plans include additional improvements to CX functionality and more use of in-depth data analysis to enhance customer insights, volume and uptake.

Leveraging on the Group’s strength and presence in ASEAN and key financial centres, Maybank Private Wealth has strategically expanded its business footprint aggressively across ASEAN and beyond. With three onshore booking centres firmly established in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, it offers HNW clients across the region direct access to regional and global investment opportunities. This has enabled Private Wealth to attract HNW clients from all 10 ASEAN countries with its Universal Banking proposition, on-board clients from the wider Maybank Group and through advancing clients along the wealth continuum.

Maybank continues its leadership in the Islamic Private Banking space through Maybank Islamic Bank, the largest Islamic Bank in ASEAN & Malaysia and one of the top Islamic Banks globally with total assets of US$50 billion. Moving ahead, Maybank Private Wealth aims to grow and establish future presence across the Asian region and Middle East by reaching out to service clients with a full suite of Islamic wealth management solutions.

Sustainable investing have gathered pace in recent years and will continue to grow as a crucial investment strategy in wealth management. [AL1] Maybank Private looks to contribute towards the Group’s sustainability goals by building depth in its suite of ESG-themed investments & solutions that are aligned to clients’ investing goals.

The Group’s four main sustainability goals, which will help it grow and be ready for the low carbon economy of the future, are to:
Mobilise RM50bn[AL1] (US$11bn) in sustainable finance by 2025.

Improve the lives of one million households across ASEAN by 2025.

Be carbon neutral by 2030 & achieve a net zero carbon position by 2050.

Deliver 1,000 SDG-related outcomes by 2025 and improve the sustainability of its operations by a metric of one million hours a year of green ops by 2025.

KBank Private Banking (KPB) headquartered in Thailand won the Best Bank for Sustainability and ESG leadership at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022, held on 6 October, for its use of webinars and social media tools to support charities advancement and knowledge transfers, and for its work aiding client’s long-term growth needs and education. Its ‘Perfect Wealth’ philosophy seeks to embed growth and happiness with the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda by following 3S Strategies comprising of the: (i) S-curve; (ii) sustainability; and (iii) sharing.

In regard to business performance the S-curve theory states that a company sustains slow growth at first; followed by rapid growth in phase two, when it is good to be an investor, then during phase three declining growth is evident that hopefully still plateaus at a high level, guaranteeing consistent sustainable returns during the final phase of the firm’s growth cycle, thereby creating an S shaped graph.
(i) KBank Private Banking (KPB) wants to be at the start of the S curve as early as possible on behalf of its client base consisting of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) with more than US$1.5 million of Assets under Management (AuM) lodged with the bank, while also supporting the change towards sustainable business cycles.

(ii) Its sustainability credentials were demonstrated by the recent launch of its K Sustainable Long-Short Fund Not for Retail Investors (K-SUSTAIN-UI) that focuses on sustainable investing to boost the potential for stable long-term returns for its clients. A number of virtual webinars, created with the support of Lombard Odier, also align with its sustainability strategy, such as:
Sustainability revolution: a call for action – World-renowned stop climate change advocate, Al Gore, was the main speaker at this event, which was livestreamed online and amplified by the bank’s social media channels, attracting hundreds of clients.

The Race to Net Zero: A Sprint or A Marathon? – Keeping the momentum, another virtual event with Lombard Odier was held in September 2021 with former UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sharing his knowledge about the global drive to achieve net-zero emissions to mitigate climate change. KBank Private Banking (KPB) broadcast the event via its online and social media platforms, as did its partner, reaching clients in Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Regular online seminars are held by KBank Private Banking (KPB) to equip customers with essential and interesting knowledge in order to keep them abreast of the present investment climate and of ways to adjust their portfolios appropriately. The ‘New Ways to Invest in Sustainability Megatrend’ seminar was particularly noteworthy.

(iii) Sharing is a philosophy that KBank Private Banking (KPB) has adopted enthusiastically and supported via a series of virtual seminars aimed at educating invited charities in Thailand about the best methodologies to follow in order to optimally manage their assets and organizations. After all, the more efficient and organised a charity is the better it can pursue its mission.

The events connected experts and well-known speakers with participants to encouraging the sharing of ideas, experiences, and inspirations. An example online webinar from last year was entitled ‘Guidelines for Sustainable Asset Management for Public Charitable Organizations in the Present Circumstances’. It outlined the role good asset management can play in making a sustainable contribution to society.

A fundraising night was also recently held for good causes entitled ‘Perfect Wealth, Perfect Night’. Clients have additionally been encouraged to support specific charities highlighted on KBank Private Banking (KPB)’s social media. Short clips outlining the need are presented with a QR code to make donating easier.

The bank works with a well-known electronic e-donation platform to facilitate client and general donations and highlight worthy charities. The platform also offers tax-deduction documents, certificate, payment mechanisms and other supporting material all in one easy-to-access place.

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) was Highly Commended (HC) in the Outstanding Private Bank: Southeast Asia category at the 32nd Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022, held on 6 October, for its new digital platform and future plans.

SCB’s vision is to become a major digital platform service provider in Thailand under its planned new parent, SCB X, as well as a Southeast Asian and wider regional financial tech conglomerate by 2025, offering its processing power to others and services via a wide variety of partners. This is in-line with the financial services (FS) trend towards the usage of open application programming interfaces (APIs) that make data exchange and multiple service provision much easier.

Making the private banker’s life easier by giving them greater access to fast, diverse information is a key requirement too, as part of SCB’s technological and organisational overhaul, which has three key over-arching strategic pillars. Any changes or IT updates must deliver:

Personalisation: must be front and centre for all things whether it is data, automated advisory insights, log-on, face-to-face, or particular services, such as asset allocations that use in-house experts for discretionary portfolio management (DPM) on behalf of clients in-line with their pre-stated risk appetite and goals. Whatever SCB delivers must be personalised. That requires integration and alignment of IT systems, flexible core infrastructures, training for the staff and so on.

Extensive solutions with a value-adding advisory platform: A full suite of digital tools and data that can flow across the organisation, and to external partners in a secure way, for staff and clients is essential to be able to offer the wealth creation and growth options SCB wants to. For example, SCB’s open IT architecture that can handle open API-enabled calls for data enables 21 local asset management companies, including SCB Asset Management, to offer a wide variety of offshore mutual funds, both in equity and fixed income. Structured and other non-traditional products can also now be more easily added to its technology stack as well.

Seamless journey with full access to group wide services: this delivers the enhanced customer experience (CX) that SCB deems as essential for its ultra and high net worth (U/HNW) clients in Thailand and elsewhere, who are often time poor so need fast, easy, and connected services from on-boarding to advice, investment, and other actions.

Having an open IT architecture helps provide a seamless good CX. Staff empowerment is vital too. SCB’s has provided training for Private Bankers that use the new in-house wPlan platform capabilities in order to deliver personalised insights, products, and services. Apart from that, variety of in-house training courses are exclusively developed for staffs. The bank has also invested in other new digital service and data platforms, such as its Easy Invest solution, and continues to do so in pursuit of its vision for the future.

ICICI Securities in India won Outstanding Wealth Management Service for the Affluent at the virtual Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022 for the way it personalises and segments its client base to better serve their needs at scale and offers curated solutions.

ICICI Securities is an integrated financial services firm that offers wealth management (WM), investment banking and equity broking services within India’s ICICI Group. The home-grown private wealth unit was set up in 2010 to cater to the growing segment of ultra and high net worth individuals (U / HNWI) and affluent people in India.

The private wealth management unit serves more than INR 2.7 trillion assets spread across 60,000+ UHNI clients that is served by a strong team of 450+ specialists that includes senior private bankers, product, advisory, service and family office team members.

ICICI Securities WM seeks to attract both mass affluent as well as HNI customers. This creates two different ecosystems one serving the need of the young affluent customers by investing in technology to automate and personalise its service to mass affluent –including lifestage solutions, passive investments, loans and insurance; and the other delving into a more nuanced / bespoke solution for U/HNWIs including family office, retirement, alternate investments.

Also important is the use of digital tools, data analytics, client experiences, such as:
Gamification, of goal-based investment tools, which offer unique user engagements. This is allied to social investing alerts for millennials and online learning tools

Young Millennials also get a low-cost transaction platform that offers easy to consume actioning and research tools, all communication and services to millennials and micro-segmented U/HNWIs rely on smart data analytics engine installed by ICICI Securities. This drives personalisation and enhances the customer experience (CX). Clients only see content, product and service options that is relevant to them. Profiles might include a business owner, salaried worker, self-employed professional, retiree, non-resident Indian (NRI), active trader etc. who are offered equities, fixed income, alternates, global investments basis their asset allocation framework. Loans and insurance solutions are also offered as appropriate – via the most relevant channel – be that a website, app, digital assistant, or RM / financial advisor (see figure 1).

Figure 1: ICICI Securities hyper-personalisation process.

Source: ICICI Securities entry into the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022.

The online brokerage service offers a ‘one-click’ risk-based and thematic mutual fund portfolio solution as well that offers:
Quick online execution.
Risk based allocations.
Holistic portfolio investment approaches and well-researched mutual fund options.

The global investment platform provides seamless on-boarding without physical documents via the online account opening ICICIdirect service. The alliances with interactive brokers give access to six major overseas markets, including the USA. Through this platform, it offers curated equity portfolios from the likes of WisdomTree, State Street Global Advisors and other such fund managers.

They also offer 25+ curated equity baskets called “Masters of the Street” by India’s leading investment advisors.

A comprehensive and aggregated portfolio analysis tool ensures:

A complete overview of a client’s portfolio across multiple advisors / brokers / wealth managers.
Real-time valuation of direct equity and day-end valuations of the remaining portfolio.
A function to easily upload or delete multiple portfolios & track their performance.
Portfolio analysis is digitally accessible at various levels and recommendations can flow accordingly.

All of this technology and automation is delivered at a low subscription fee, which is important in the mass affluent sector. An ‘investonomics’ digital engagement microsite offers virtual events, analytics, and other touchpoints to drive engagement.

The LIFEY goal-based investment and retirement solution is also noteworthy for its algorithm-driven portfolio creation approach, with built-in risk profiling and requirements capturing during on-boarding, allied to its solution mapping capabilities. This drives appropriate execution, tracking and recommendation engines, with a failsafe review procedure and course-correction capabilities to ensure appropriate life stage services.

They also have an exclusive family office to cater to Ultra High Net Worth clients. It provides niche as well as customized solutions to cater to the needs of the UHNI. These cover the entire breadth of the investment, protection and lending needs of the client. Offerings include direct equity solutions through various platforms like mutual funds, portfolio management services and Alternative Investment funds, debt solutions through direct corporate bonds, mutual funds as well as credit offerings through AIF’s. Offerings also include private equity offerings both through direct deals as well as fund offerings.

ISEC also runs portfolio management solutions for clients that have various strategies like smart beta, multi asset portfolios and active equity management on a discretionary and non-discretionary mode.

Riyad Bank won Outstanding Private Bank for Growth Strategy at the virtual Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022 for the way it is targeting female and NextGen HNWI clients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and providing appropriate relationship manager training to deliver on its strategy, garnering it a Highly Commended accolade for its Outstanding RM Training & Development Programme.

Women are estimated to control around a third of the world’s total private wealth, according to Riyad Bank’s analysis and they are also inclined towards greater loyalty and advocacy of their trusted financial advisors. That is why females are a key part of Riyad Bank’s private banking client acquisition and retention strategy in KSA, reflecting the fact that global wealth demographics have been going through seismic shifts in recent times.

The rise of UHNW millennials, either inheriting or earning wealth in the tech or other traditional and emerging sectors, is equally as significant and forms another key part of Riyad’s growth plans.

Building relationships with this current generation of millennials, and with their children, will be crucial as the population in KSA is noticeably young. The growth strategy also includes:

Single Family Offices (SFO): This consolidated service caters for Riyad’s wealthiest clients through providing exceptional wealth management offering with a broad range of solutions and capabilities.

International Reach: Riyad Bank is utilizing its international branches in London, USA and Singapore to stay close to its UHNWI clients and provide the unique experience is aspired by them.

In an age of constant digital change and innovation, Lombard International Assurance understands that the needs of wealth advisers serving ultra and high net worth (U/HNW) clients continue to evolve. Focused on driving innovation and efficiency in every aspect of its business, Lombard International Assurance strives to lead the industry when it comes to developing and enhancing the service and solutions their stakeholders have come to expect over the past 30+ years.

The integration of technology into key processes sits at the heart of this approach, with Lombard International Assurance’s digital servicing platform, “Connect”, which delivers online, secure and compliant policy management and servicing. Such an approach is fundamental in successfully delivering operational excellence, as well as upgraded accessibility for partners and clients across all markets the Company serves.

Its strategy and efforts won the Most Effective Investment Service Offering at the Private Banker International Global Wealth Awards 2022.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Luxembourg, Lombard International Assurance provides customised cross-border insurance-based wealth, estate, and succession planning solutions for U/HNW individuals, families, and institutions. The Company partners with clients’ trusted advisors, including private banks, family offices, tax lawyers, investment managers, and wealth planners providing a platform to protect, grow and pass on assets. Business relationships with over 1,000+ asset managers and 200+ custodian banks are active, and a range of insurance-based wealth solutions are available across a diverse set of asset classes, spanning life and wealth cover, liquidity and long-term legacy planning options and non-traditional assets.

The last few years have seen a significant increase in the complexity that wealthy individuals and families face as they navigate an uncertain global economy as well as an evolving suite of asset classes. Driven by the unpredictable geopolitical environment, changing market dynamics and macroeconomic instability, Lombard International Assurance continues to adapt its offering to help U/HNW families and their advisers navigate these complexities.

Whilst U/HNW families re-evaluate their existing planning, with more than $15 trillion in wealth set to transition globally by 2030[1], planning early is all the more important. Asset protection, portfolio diversification and bespoke wealth planning are becoming much more important criteria. Furthermore, with wealth structuring and intergenerational planning becoming even more multifaceted, wealth professionals need to ensure they are well equipped and have the necessary resources to manage their clients’ evolving needs and expectations.

Lombard International Assurance succeeds in providing flexibility and choice to partners and clients, and delivers tailored wealth solutions rooted in deep local knowledge, powered by an internationally diverse team and digitalisation.

Providing consistency in its service and value proposition across all operational markets is key, and this is achieved through the implementation of a robust, agile, and holistic digital proposition. Not only does it enhance servicing capabilities and operational efficiency, but also enables Lombard International Assurance to create further reliability by streamlining and, where possible, integrating its own systems with those of its partners. From a business development perspective, digital onboarding and servicing platforms, coupled with the availability of online transaction tools, represent important sustainable growth levers, in line with business partner requirements and expectations.

Lombard International Assurance’s approach to sustainably future-proofing its digital infrastructure is supported by three key pillars. Firstly, it ensures that its digital solutions enables its own talented international team of experts to focus their attention on value adding activities, rather than manual processes. Secondly, the solutions need to simplify the complex by continuing to invest in product development, technology and operations. Finally, they must also be a catalyst for greater compatibility and integration with current and future stakeholders.

Additionally, Lombard International Assurance has invested time and resource focusing on its people by developing a clear employee value proposition based upon its values and core purpose, covering recruitment, career development and progression to learning, to having fun at work and beyond. Attracting, retaining and nurturing talent enables the Company to further develop trust with partners, clients and colleagues, ultimately enabling Lombard International Assurance to grasp the opportunities ahead, not only today but into the tomorrow.

A Generational Shift: Family Wealth Transfer Report 2019

Winner: RBC WM – North American base wins award & global operation recognised

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Wealth Management (WM) serves affluent and ultra / high net worth individuals (U/HNWIs) from its key operational hubs in Canada, the US, British Isles and Asia, garnering it a Highly Commended nod in the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Global category from the judges at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022, and a Winner trophy in the Outstanding Global Private Bank: North America category. It was also Highly Commended for providing the Most Innovative Digital Offering.

RBC WM provides a full suite of banking, investment, trust, and other wealth management solutions to affluent, HNW and UHNW investors. RBC WM also includes its asset management arm RBC Global Asset Management (GAM), which provides investment products and services to institutional and individual clients directly and via RBC and third-party distributors.

As of Q2 2022, RBC WM has over C$1.3 trillion (US$989.76bn) of Assets under Administration (AUA) and C$950 billion (US$723.29bn) of Assets under Management (AuM), plus over 5,500 financial consultants, advisors, private bankers, and trust officers in its network, which has delivered revenue of C$13.3 billion (US$10.13bn) in FY2021, up 9.6% from a year earlier.

As Canada’s largest financial institution, with 89,000+ employees serving more than 17 million clients when you include the retail bank which provides an effective WM funnel, it is natural that its ‘home’ North American business is particularly strong. RBC GAM alone is:
The largest Canada-based asset manager, with C$560.8 billion (US$426.97bn) in client AuM globally.

A top performing investment firm, with approximately 78% of AuM outperforming the benchmark on a 3-year basis.
In possession of a balanced investor asset mix, comprising of 53% retail and 47% institutional client assets.
Largest retail fund company in Canada: with 16.1% of the all-in market share, which expands to 32.1% if only bank-affiliated fund companies are included
The RBC Dominion Securities Inc (DS) full-service brokerage business is the Canadian market leader, with approximately 26% market share and C$445 billion (US$338.80bn) in AUA from over 300,000 households.

The RBC Private Banking (PB) business is also a Canadian market leader, possessing the number one position amongst the Big 5 Canadian banks for:
#1 Revenue market share
#1 Deposit balance market share
#1 Loan balance market share

RBC WM Services (WMS) is a group of 200+ highly accredited wealth planning professionals consisting of will & estate consultants, financial planning specialists and business owner planning specialists. WMS professionals support advisors in RBC WM across Canada by providing strategies, advice and solutions to address the often complex planning needs of HNW and UHNW clients, including their families and businesses. WMS is the largest team of wealth planning professionals in Canada.

In the US, the bank’s wealth management (USWM) unit is the seventh largest full-service wealth advisory firm in the country as measured by its number of advisors (2,100) in 178 branches across 42 States, serving 340,000 households. It’s the sixth largest by AUA, reaching US$542bn in 2021.

City National Bank (CNB) is the US private and commercial bank serving U/HNWIs and commercial clients. It offers a broad range of lending, deposit, cash management, international banking, equipment financing, wealth management and other products and services. CNB has opened new offices in New York, D.C., and other East Coast locations to drive growth in the important US marketplace and is targeting the entertainment ecosystem and productivity and efficiency gains via expanded digital capabilities to help it expand further. The Capital Markets team can help here too.

Commendation: Digital offering

RBC WM has made significant investments in its digital and data capabilities in recent years, winning it a further Highly Commended certificate in the Most Innovative Digital Offering category at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022. Its client and advisor-facing digital tools, such as a Meeting Scheduler that integrates with calendars to ease and automate the booking of virtual, in-person or phone meetings, were particularly noteworthy. The Scheduler automated 13,000 meetings last year, cutting admin tasks and time. RBC WM has also launched:

Redesigned corporate websites: focusing on accessibility and mobile-first design that provides a consistent brand experience while addressing regional needs and goals.

Improved CX & WHO: The Wealth Management Online portal has been enhanced to provide a better customer experience (CX) as part of a wider company-wide digital overhaul. Clients can now securely and more easily view their entire portfolio in one place and access research, analysis, transfer funds, collaborate with an advisor, and so on.

Digitally enabled AOS: Account Opening and Servicing capabilities have been enhanced for clients and advisors that need on-boarding.

Artie: free online executor tools to help existing and potential executors who are looking for education, guidance and support in the estate settlement process.

Quintet Private Bank has won two Highly Commended awards at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022 in the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Europe category and Best Bank for Sustainability and ESG leadership.

Headquartered in Luxembourg the boutique wealth manager operates in 50 European cities. Quintet serves wealthy individuals and their families, as well as a broad range of institutional and professional clients, including family offices, foundations, and external asset managers.

Its presence in Europe and continuing growth were noteworthy with total group income rising to €460.8 million (US$456.54m) last year, up 3% compared to €447m (US$442.86m) in 2020. Revenue growth rose to €348m (US$344.78m), an 11% increase compared to 2020, supported by higher fees and increased lending, which reached €4.5 billion (US$4.46bn), up 25%.

As of 31 December 2021, Quintet’s total client assets stood at €96.6bn (US$95.7bn), up 14% from the end of 2020, to stand at their highest level in more than a decade.

Sustainable Assets under Management (AuM) rose to €11.7bn (US$11.59bn) at the end of last year, nearly doubling from €5.9bn (US$5.84bn) at the end of 2020, helped by a series of partnerships, such as with German asset manager DWS, where Quintet acted as the seed investor unveiling in June 2021 two Xtrackers Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). These give investors access to the rapidly growing market for green corporate bonds and are deployed by Quintet in discretionary portfolios, aligning with its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda. Other partners include:

Robeco: A Dutch asset manager with whom Quintet was the exclusive launch partner on the unveiling of RobecoSAM US Green Bonds. These provide diversified exposure to the US green bond market, fuelling positive environmental impacts, while aiming to provide long-term capital growth to clients. €125m (US$123.8m) was initially committed.

Amundi: Quintet made €200m (US$198.2m) in client commitments to their Emerging Markets (EM) Green Bond, an offshoot of the asset manager’s Amundi Planet Emerging Green One, the world’s first EM only targeted green-bond, which was unveiled with the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. Both investments were deployed in Quintet discretionary portfolios.

In Q1 2022, Quintet Earth was launched. This multi-asset, climate-neutral investment fund was launched with €280m (US$277.4m) in assets. It combines equal exposure to green bonds and low-carbon equities, offsetting associated carbon emissions through the purchase of carbon credits associated with reforestation activities – thereby supporting sustainable development and contributing towards the ESG strategy. The promise is to generate competitive long-term, risk-adjusted returns, while simultaneously combating climate change.

A partnership with The Royal Mint in the UK to introduce the use of recycled gold in an exchange-traded commodity instrument further demonstrates Quintet’s commitment to sustainability.

Emirates NBD (ENBD) Private Banking (PB) won the Outstanding Non-Resident (NRI)/Global Indians Offering at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022, held virtually in October, for its dual coverage model serving clients including NRIs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and globally via offshore centres in Singapore, London, Mumbai and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), with team members now added to serve NRI clients from the subcontinent based in Africa. New investment products helped ENBD PB secure the win in the NRI category and its wider offering garnered a HC: Highly Commended trophy for Outstanding Private Bank: Middle East for its results and enhanced digital and family offering.

Emirates NBD Private Banking has deepened its relationship with the family offices of renowned UAE families and on-boarded new ultra and high-net worth individuals (U/HNWIs) to achieve a 100 per cent year-onyear (YoY) growth in sourcing during the first quarter of 2022, as part of its focus on higher value customers and organic growth.

It has not forgotten its other customers, however, with digital tools, advice and services on tablets, mobiles and voice ensuring 58 per cent of customers were digitally active last year, up 5 per cent YoY. Digitalisation was further evidenced by 686 webinar attendees, up 72 per cent YoY, signing up to hear ENBD’s first quarter advisory message this year that a ‘tactically reactive’ investment approach was best for 2022 rather than a proactive one. This was due to the accurately predicted volatile year coupled with war, rising interest rates, Covid-19 induced supply chain issues still evident, rising oil prices, currency volatility and other factors all impacting economic performance.

Revenues are 8 per cent ahead of last year in 2022 for ENBD PB and fee income ratios are continuing their upward curve, which allied to a best-in-class cost to income ratio has delivered strong financial results and a PBI Awards commendation in the Middle-East. New launches in recent years, such as the Emirates Signature Funds of Funds, have also contributed to its success.

Comprehensive Non-Resident Indian service

The NRI segment, which represent 60 per cent of the large expatriate population in the UAE, was especially well served by ENBD PB, ensuring its win in that category. The addition of two new team members covering Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda meant that client numbers in East Africa have gone up considerably, now representing 30 per cent of the client base. They join a Middle-East and North Africa (Mena) team of 14 RMs and three investment advisors, as part of ENBD PB’s Global South Asian Business (GSAB) unit.

Support from the chief investment office (CIO) team and execution desks in Dubai and Singapore, which can access listed capital markets and over-the-counter (OTC) instruments globally via specialist traders familiar with dark pools of liquidity and algorithmic trading, further bulks out the comprehensive NRI offering. London adds further investment and offshore options, with Jersey providing next generation wealth transfer and trust funds, allied to the local services in the three Saudi Arabia offices in Jeddah, Riyadh, and Khobar. The Mumbai head office back in India offers high yield deposit, transfer and other options to those that want to repatriate money.

All RMs and advisors are trained and certified via the online Candriam Academy to offer sustainable and responsible investment options. To address GSAB clients’ preference towards income generating fixed income vehicles, ENBD PB broadened its investment products to include specific mutual funds and bonds, with some allocation into equities. For example, fixed income mutual funds and leveraged deposits in partnership with select Indian banks have proved popular, providing an enhanced AED/USD currency-based return to NRI clients. For those with aggressive investment risk profiles, a derivatives trading platform is available, although present volatility means this is only for the brave.

Tailored wealth plans and trust options complete the package, with brokerage, asset management, advisory and ancillary services all rolled together to offer outstanding private banking. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 65 in 2022 proves its customers are happy.

A good private banking (PB) service is reliant on good well-trained people, products, and delivery. In South Korea, the triumvirate is represented by the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 winner in the Outstanding Private Banker-Regional Player category Yoonsil Choi, who won for her qualifications, dedication, and results. In conjunction with colleagues, she also helped the bank attain a Highly Commended (HC) accolade in the Outstanding Private Bank: North Asia category as well.

Yoonsil Choi, in the Walkerhill branch of Hana Bank in South Korea, has been with the private bank (PB) since 2003 and is a certificated financial planner (CFP) and foreign exchange specialist (CFES). Her focus on the family office, serving individual VIP diversification and portfolio management needs, alongside second and third generation clients’ wealth transfer requirements, has delivered stunning results.

She sold US$3.3 million in Living Trusts in 1H 2022. These revocable instruments can accomplish many of the same objectives as a Will in an easier fashion with detail added to the intentions, specifying how assets should be distributed via a focus on trusts, inheritance, and succession planning.

Bancassurance sales worth US$8.4m were also achieved by Yoonsil Choi after she helped solve inheritance issues for a corporate customer’s ownership share and consulted on aggregate taxation on financing income. She managed US$176m in Assets under Management (AuM) as of 31 May 2022.

Overall, Hana’s PB business grew 3.8% last year to reach US$55.5bn, helping it achieve its North Asian commendation at the 32nd PBI Awards. Its Hana Club 1 high-end PB service, operated 2 branches of Club 1 PB Centre at Gang-Nam and Gang-buk region for UHNW clients, contributed significantly, as did an enhanced digital fund platform that comes with a goal-based investing (GBI) algorithm and a portfolio rebalancing advisory service, fund updates and so on. Available on the Hana 1Q mobile banking application, a strategic alliance with the Netmarble online game publisher, enhanced its functionality for millennials and added a ‘Marble of Investment’ game targeting function that enhanced the customer experience (CX). New fund sales via the mobile channel made up 46% of total fund sales last year after the fun digital fund platform was unveiled.

Expansions into art services and an alliance with a local auctioneer also helped grow the business, alongside digital life care services on YouTube explaining wine investing, how to access funeral care services for companion animals, get real life sick care assistance, and so on. Lifestyle communication via the monthly Hana 1QM online webzine www.hana1qm.com, videos and so on also helped ensure customer stickiness, expansion, and loyalty, with segmentation for the 50 to 60 year-old age group a particular aim as this is a core constituency.

IIFL Wealth Management in India won Most Innovative Digital Offering at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 for a new WhatsApp for Business tool and its crucial Altiore platform that gives clients access to better data and services. Relationship managers (RMs) can use an Insights platform to pull data for presentation as well. An automatic sync to the firm’s system of record ensures all the new platforms and analytics are updated as a matter of course.

Headquartered in Mumbai, IIFL Wealth Management has more than 900 employees, with a 90% retention rate, and a presence in five [RHIPW1] major global financial hubs, plus 24 locations across India. It is the investment and financial advisor to more than 6,800 families in the ultra and high net worth (U/HNW) segments, with Assets under Management (AuM) per RM of US$160.79 million last year.

The Indian company is a firm believer in a digital first approach. Consequentially, it has designed a new ecosystem and aligned core to more easily deliver a fully data-centric operation to its clients and RMs. For example, Altiore is a new platform with analytics at its heart that gives clients an aggregated view of their entire net worth, along with exhaustive and industry leading data, graphs, reports and so on across the entire portfolio. Information about each asset class and specific advisors is available at the touch of a button. Altiore provides:

A 360-degree view of clients’ portfolios.
Offers data-rich dashboards, to aid faster and more nuanced decision-making.
Monitoring, alert and tracking tools.
Portfolio evaluation capability.

When a client wants to talk to an RM, there is a new WhatsApp for Business tool that can be used to schedule a review, or to answer any queries at any time. It can also be used to request product information, statements and so on, which can be supplied automatically, enabling more productivity internally at IIFL Wealth Management .

The Insights platform can provide data on the go to RMs, bringing them detailed analytics across the spectrum of asset classes held by clients in their portfolios as a way to help them make fast decisions. A scheme’s performance, liquidity within the portfolio, past performance, and so on is also easily accessible. Other benefits of the technology refresh project undertaken at IIFL Wealth Management accrue from enhanced:

Monitoring: the ability to track portfolio guidelines, manage risk dynamically, and deep dive into portfolio hygiene to ensure programmes and pre-stated wishes are being adhered to is now simpler to achieve.

Granularity: Insights, Altiore and the new technology stack at IIFL Wealth Management collectively provide deeper, more relevant analytics. More granular data in each asset class and across the entire IT estate of the firm to the various client or RM end points, enables better service, satisfaction, risk mitigation and opportunity spotting. The improved digital offering allows: o Quicker views of best and worst performing investments across asset classes.
o Easier comparisons for RMs versus nuanced benchmarks.
o Helps relationship teams ensure that clients adhere to their Investment Portfolio Statements and identifies outliers, if required, that may need corrective action.

Look through analysis: on holdings to better understand exposures related to market cap, sector exposures, credit quality of underlying paper, total exposures held directly and indirectly, and many more data points, all helps RMs to assess the risk in portfolios more accurately. Mutual funds, for instance, can be hard to granularly interrogate unless appropriate data is accessible about the underlying instruments. Portfolios can be complex, especially for UNHW families, so providing easier, faster data is always a good thing.

Available liquidity: in a portfolio, including upcoming liquidity, can help clients to better plan deployments in advance, in a more structured manner. Being able to spot opportunities in advance, rather than being reactive, is always preferable.
Data security is in-built into IIFL Wealth Management’s innovative new digital offering, as you would expect with any wealth manager, and confidentiality for its UNHW and indeed all other clients, is a guiding principle of the firm. Technology adoption doesn’t change that basic fact; indeed it can strengthen it.

Itaú Private Bank (PB) reached BRL700 billion Brazilian Reais (US$134.8bn) in Assets under Management (AuM) last year, almost double that of the second-place player in Brazil, on total funding of BRL38bn (US$7.3bn), making it the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Latin America at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 for its size, performance, and international capabilities.

The Private Bank’s structure includes more than 800 professional specialists, strategically located in 14 global offices to serve its clients and 8,286 diverse families, whose operations and investments span the globe. Itaú PB can cater for them at ‘home’ in Latin America (LatAm) or anywhere else in the world.

Revenue increased by 14% from 2015 to 2021 when the last full year of results were produced. Net income grew by 21% for a compound annual growth rate of 19% over the last six years.

This year has been a volatile market, however, impacted by the on-going Covid-19 pandemic and how this has affected global supply chains and economies allied to the recent war in Ukraine, which has led to rising global interest rates, oil prices and so on – not to mention the separate socioeconomic crisis in Latin America. Volatile markets present risks and opportunities in 2022. But Itaú PB knows how to navigate around economic headwinds and still perform by:

Focusing on the customer via events, online content, surveys and so on;
Build long-term relationships via staff training;
Promote continuous evolution of services by providing appropriate IT and expertise;
& Adhere to ethical standards, which is increasingly important in an era where the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda and sustainability considerations define the future investment landscape.

Itaú PB’s model is to have a banker, who serves as the relationship leader, orchestrating the work of the advisor, the banking manager, and a team of specialists in areas like wealth planning, structured products, credit, and pension plans. This creates a clear and consolidated service team. The Itaú Family Office offers further specialist services. Over the last five years, the number of families has increased 44%.

The relationship with the Itaú Unibanco retail bank generates cross-segment client referrals, feeding clientele into the Group’s mass affluent, wealth management (WM) and ultimately PB business and establishing a clear value chain and journey for its customers. The model allows for joint operational efficiencies, where possible, data-sharing and opens countless cross-selling opportunities for the various financial segments across Latin America. The Itaú BBA wholesale business also contributes towards growth.

The foundation of Itaú PB’s business is solid, lasting relationships and an investment management model based on five pillars:
Wealth planning,
ESG,
Tailored solutions based on a structured investment process,
A one-stop shop with a flexible Open IT platform,
& Consistent results with a focus on long-term vision.

Itaú Private Bank was also HC: Highly Commended at the 32nd Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022 in the following category: Most Effective Investment Service Offering.

Investing in digital and structural innovations, such as new mobile apps and a new economy (NE) service, has allowed UBS Global Wealth Management (GWM) to deliver record results in Asia, winning it the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Asia-Pacific category at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022, held on 6 October.

UBS GWM recorded a record profit before tax (PbT) figure in APAC last year of US$1.2 billion, up by US$ 176 million, with Q4 bookings showing a 20% Year-on-Year (YoY) increase.

Asian assets under management (AuM) reached the number one position at US$521 bn, with the region contributing over a quarter of the global group’s PbT.

Clients in APAC are happy as well according to UBS’ latest annual ‘Client-Based Insights Survey’, conducted at the end of 2021, which showed that over 90% of APAC clients are very happy with UBS.

These results have been helped by well-trained long-standing staff and digital innovations designed to enhance the client experience (CX). The model is strong enough to resist any economic headwinds encountered in 2022. Examples of innovation include:

UBS [My Way]: this discretionary mandate offering provides clients with access to over 60 building blocks to create a portfolio customised to their own preferences. The blocks vary across sustainability-focused to alternatives such as private equity. Clients can pick what is most relevant and matters most to them, while in-house experts take care of the day-to-day portfolio management. UBS [My Way] has accumulated over US$2bn in regional invested assets within one year of its launch. In addition, more than 70% of clients in Asia have selected sustainability-focused building blocks in their portfolios, and 25% of AuM is invested in sustainability-focused building blocks.

UBS Circle One: Launched in 2022, this new mobile app is a digital platform that brings the best of UBS’ global ecosystem to clients, connecting them to experts, thought leaders and instant actionable ideas. It delivers chief investment office (CIO) thought leadership in an engaging and convenient way via interactive videos, podcasts, and live webinars on a daily and weekly basis, complementing traditional reports and physical events. Clients are able to receive timely actionable ideas and investment opportunities at their fingertips.

Digitalisation: The past two years of global pandemic have put our platforms such as UBS E-banking, E-trading, UBS Advisor Messaging (WeChat and Whatsapp) to the test. We are proud of how they have provided us with stability and sustained growth as a result of helping to deliver content that is personalized, relevant, on-time and seamless. By year end 2021, UBS’ online trades increased by over 90% YoY, with 70% of equity trades now done online by clients, proving the popularity of its digital offerings. Across Q1-3 2021, monthly online trading revenue increased by 65% YoY.

Structural innovations that contributed towards UBS’ win at the PBI Awards 2022 included its long-standing focus on a ‘one bank’ model, as exemplified by its dedicated Global Family and Institutional Wealth (GFIW) unit, formerly the Global Family Office. The GFIW supports entrepreneurs, family offices, and other private investors with sophisticated, institutional-like needs by providing them with more seamless, overlapping access to UBS’s investment banking and wealth management and transfer capabilities.

UBS’ dedicated New Economy Team (NET), set up in 2021, is another example that exemplifies its one bank strategy. . Comprised of sector experts and deal markers across its businesses, the unit is designed to capture opportunities for clients across all sectors and industries and connect new economy (NE) companies with industry peers, investors, and strategic partners, to the mutual benefit of all.

NET acts as a central point of contact, providing ‘one bank’ solutions to clients and access to UBS’ global and local networks for NE entrepreneurs selected by experienced bankers who know how to choose winners at an early stage of their development.

By year end 2021, YoY revenue from NE clients across the bank in APAC grew by over 90%.

Julius Baer won the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Global category at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022 for its financial results, various regional initiatives, ESG and enhanced capabilities in private markets, wealth financing and real estate, among many other initiatives.

Full year adjusted net profits exceeded CHF1 billion Swiss Francs (US$1.02bn) for the first-time last year at Julius Baer. The wealth management (WM) group, which is headquartered in Zurich dating back to the 19th century, and has since spread around Europe and the globe with a presence in 25 countries via 60 offices in locations such as Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sao Paulo and so on, has not rested on its laurels however, posting an impressive CHF428 billion (US$437bn) in Assets under Management (AuM) at the end of June 2022 and advancing the alignment of its digitalisation efforts with its strong personal advisory ties.

This is remarkable as it has to meet near- and long-term global challenges and opportunities, such as war in Ukraine, rising interest rates, oil, and commodity price spikes, Covid lockdowns in China, and the climate change-driven environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda. The market correction in H1 2022 were driven by the aforementioned near-term factors and had a deep impact on asset valuation and client sentiment, requiring close collaboration with clients to help navigate the difficult environment.

The Group focuses on its selected key markets for growth globally, such as Germany, Switzerland, and Brazil where it has a new advisory office in Sao Paulo, and Spain and Portugal where a newly strengthened Iberian Intermediaries team in Madrid has been supplanted by a senior manager transferring from Switzerland to Spain.

Middle east, as evidenced by new premises in its Dubai hub and the appointment of Rahul Malhotra there to head up its Non-Resident Indians (NRI) wealth management efforts. Further, Asian growth is also a key regional aim. A considerable part of net new money inflows last year came from Asian clients, with Singapore now Julius Baer’s second biggest global location hosting 1200 employees. Two new Group Heads have been appointed to the Singapore hub and new relationship managers (RMs) are being recruited for there and indeed for the targeted top markets globally to buttress growth efforts, alongside the rollout of multichannel digital tools.

Julius Baer is a keen ESG advocate as it wishes to offer its clients investment options they might be interested in that are reflective of global trends. Internally it wants to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions as a company by 2030 and for its treasury, mortgage, and corporate credit portfolio by 2050. It has also just introduced:

A proprietary ESG methodology to classify client investments
& ESG reports that clients will automatically receive, now that RMs have been trained on their usage.

Sustainability is a key aspect of Julius Baer’s ESG plans and its wider 2023-25 and longer-term strategy. The firm has achieved a 45% increase in client assets in sustainable discretionary mandates to close at CHF4 billion (US$4.1bn) in 2021. It has launched several new products and solutions in this area and instituted a Sustainability Circle community. This brings clients together enabling them to co-create content. The number of Philanthropy Advisory Mandates doubled last year as well.

Many more initiatives in this area to broaden the range of capabilities are in the pipeline. Julius Baer is well set to benefit from developments and opportunities in the future.

Standard Bank Wealth and Investment won Outstanding Global Private Bank: Africa and Outstanding Wealth Management Technology Initiative: Front End at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022, plus two commendations.

Wealth and Investment serves high net worth individuals (HNWIs) in sub-Saharan Africa and those interested in the continent, delivering bespoke, personalised service and seamless on-and offshore solutions to global citizens. As an integral pillar of the Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest bank ranked by assets and earnings, Wealth and Investment leverages the latest technology to meet the needs of its clients and their families.

In line with a value proposition that encompasses the attraction, growth and retention of their international clients in Africa, Wealth and Investment established an International Diaspora Clients division in 2021. Created to meet the needs of clients across segments in the Standard Bank Group, the division provides borderless banking solutions, facilitated by cutting-edge technology and tools that enable temporary resident and non-resident clients to manage their financial affairs with ease.

Figure 1: Standard Bank’s strong presence in Africa, and amongst its diaspora, is evidenced by its global footprint and its R122bn (US$7.2bn) in Assets under Management (AuM).

Source: Standard Bank’s PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 entry.

Non-resident South Africans living away from the bank’s core ‘home’ market in particular appreciate the bespoke property and investment solutions of the International Diaspora Clients division. Diplomats, embassy employees and international business people either from South Africa, or with interests there, are all part of the diaspora model. The bank additionally has offices and clients in Nigeria, Kenya, across Africa and in the UK’s Channel Islands.

Non-residents have access to current, international and wealth accounts, multicurrency banking, credit cards, and loans, etc., as well as specialised relationship management and support services. They also qualify for preferential rates, no VAT on banking fees, and have access to partner services such as XpatWeb, which gives free advice about passports, visas and more. Temporary residents in South Africa have access to similar services, coupled with specialised support and advice.

Remittance services and the Shyft foreign exchange (FX) mobile app are also available. The latter allows clients to invest, buy, store, send, spend and exchange FX – and they can link physical or virtual Shyft cards and accounts to ease cross-border transfers. An international trading feature was added last year for global citizens who are constantly travelling.

Other technology options contributing towards Standard Bank’s Front-End PBI Global Wealth Award include:

My360 app: this ‘single view’ wealth management mobile and online service gives clients a global view of their financial status by aggregating and presenting data in easy to digest formats across multiple asset classes.

Super Banking app with Add-on Store: Standard Bank’s mobile banking gateway has been enhanced with a new Add-on Store that allows partners to add useful fintech tools, such as a Money Movements presentational tool or a Credit Score check. This development is in response to the trend for open application programming interfaces (APIs), which is encouraging easier data exchange and more collaboration in financial services (FS) and competition around data mastery.

These front-end developments obviously require good back-end IT in order to present, process and orchestrate information effectively. Standard Bank has this capability via a number of systems, such as its Dynamics365 relationship management (RM) system that pulls data from its core banking system, and its Challenger Portal, which provides RMs with e-learning tools, playbook resources, surveys and, ultimately, customers with a better data-centric service.

These and other similar systems are why Standard Bank was also Highly Commended in the Outstanding Wealth Management Technology Initiative: Back End category at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022. Most recently, the bank has added a new Next Best Action tool to its back-end to drive a recommendation engine that will deepen the value and strength of its client engagements.

Standard Bank Wealth and Investment was also Highly Commended at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022 in the Best Family Office category for the way they have adopted a ‘family first’ philosophy to serving all generations and types of clients; from in-country key markets like South Africa, to African diasporas living abroad, and those families with business interests on the continent. A drive to identify emerging Family Office clients among the newly wealthy was also noteworthy, as was an imminent private equity (PE) and direct investment platform.

HSBC Global Private Banking (GPB) has been named Outstanding Private Bank: North Asia at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 for leveraging its deep pool of regional and worldwide resources to achieve tremendous growth in Asia, especially in mainland China, and to enhance its service offering in the region. It was also Highly Commended for its Outstanding Philanthropy Offering.

HSBC’s ambition is to be Asia’s leading wealth manager by 2025. Its Wealth and Personal Banking (WPB) business, encompassing personal banking, insurance, asset management and private banking, is already one of the world’s largest wealth managers with approximately US$1.6 trillion in wealth balances lodged with it globally as of Q2 2022.

It is looking to the high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals and their families served by its private banking unit to drive further growth, especially in North Asia, utilising its key wealth hubs in Hong Kong, mainland China, where it is one of the largest investors among foreign banks; and Taiwan.

HSBC is investing in people, technology and product capabilities, as part of its strategy focused on:

Digital transformation in wealth management: HSBC is investing US$100 million into technology and digital upgrades for its private banking business in Asia over a period of two years in 2021-2022. The bank’s recently launched digital solutions include:
o GPB Chat, which allows clients to communicate with us instantly and securely through their preferred chat or social media platform;
o GPB eSignature, which enables clients to sign, submit and receive documents digitally anytime anywhere; and allows for paperless end-to-end processes;
o An enhanced research presentation platform; o Online trading platform, that gives our private banking clients who prefer to self-direct their trades with flexibility to invest directly globally from their mobile phones.

Strong cross-bank collaboration: Cross-departmental collaboration also unlocks bespoke solutions. For instance, HSBC Alternatives, HSBC Asset Management’s alternatives division, has secured a number of exclusive investment opportunities in private markets and hedge funds for GPB clients. HSBC’s strong balance sheet can also provide tailored credit advisory and solutions to clients who are seeking to secure finance against a range of assets from single stock positions, real estate to trophy assets like art. Significant investments have also been committed to the enhancement of the bank’s bespoke wealth and estate planning, trust, family advisory and philanthropy services. A referral model is in operation whereby clients from Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets (GBM), and the wider WPB unit within the HSBC Group are being introduced to its private banking arm to cross-pollinate growth across different business verticals. GBM, HSBC’s investment banking arm can also originate and distribute capital markets transactions on behalf of GPB’s clients.

Expanded international connectivity: Dedicated Asia coverage teams are put in place at HSBC’s GPB offices in strategic locations including the UK, Switzerland and the US, enhancing the bank’s ability to meet the unique needs of its geographically spread clientele spanning family services, capital markets, asset allocation, financing, trusts and wealth planning, and so on.

Investment and Wealth Solutions: This dedicated unit within HSBC’s WPB business brings a portfolio-based approach to constructing tailored solutions for GPB clients, with core and satellite asset allocations that meet their investment objectives. There are multiple strategies across different asset classes, regions, and long-term structural themes that clients can participate in via the bank’s Discretionary and Portfolio Management (DPM) platform. ‘CMS Sustainable’ was unveiled in 2021 to meet clients’ increasing demand for sustainable investments in Asia.

Philanthropy accolade HSBC GPB was also commended for its Outstanding Philanthropy Offering at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 in recognition of its outstanding philanthropic services, including annual donations worth US$250 million to a range of good causes administered on behalf of clients with charitable trusts as well as other long-standing good works, such as the bank’s ‘Mind Matters’ campaign in Hong Kong, an innovative campaign and first of its kinds to engineer philanthropy using a hackathon format to connect clients with opportunities to create impactful social and environmental change in their communities. It assembled expert speakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and others to brainstorm ideas on addressing mental health needs in the community, before presenting to a funders’ roundtable. Five projects were advanced from 12 shortlisted initiatives among a total of 72 pitches. Funded projects include:

Cancer support: Therapy and counselling was offered to 116 children and 202 of their family members to help manage their emotions during a family member’s cancer journey.

Suicide prevention and education support: Beneficiaries include 150 primary and secondary school age students from low-income households.

Mental wellness for the elderly: 67 visually impaired elderly residents in care homes received mindfulness and music therapy to lower their anxiety and insomnia resulting from extended isolation, prevalent in the wake of Covid-19 induced lockdowns.

Kleinwort Hambros ambition is to be a leading responsible private bank – to their clients, colleagues, communities and for the climate. Supporting colleagues and diversity forms an important part of this ambition. Initiatives include engaging juniors via an apprenticeship and a reverse mentoring scheme designed to harness their talent. Their efforts in all these areas won them the Excellence in Employee Engagement category at the 32nd Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022.

The four key aims of Kleinwort Hambros’ employee engagement programme are to:

1. Close the gap in perspectives across generations.
2. Increase engagement & visibility for junior employees.
3. Adopt a bottom-up approach to solving problems, harnessing junior talent.
4. Leverage more diverse experiences & insights.

The first three aims are helped by a reverse mentoring programme that flips the usual dynamic and reaches out to junior staff to try to learn how they would challenge the status quo and innovate at the firm. The Next Generation Executive Committee (Nexco) also brings together senior and junior employees on strategic initiatives to ensure the firm stays relevant via projects such as exploring how to use the metaverse, in which 21st century customers will live their digital lives, and how best to accommodate the increasingly prevalent hybrid office / work from home model.

A more traditional and formalised apprenticeship scheme, unveiled in 2020, also seeks to introduce talented youngsters to the bank from more diverse backgrounds. University graduates from high profile institutions are invited to join, but also those from non-Russell Group institutions that are from less well-known universities and perhaps received less familial support. Allied to a 50/50 gender split policy, this encourages more diverse backgrounds, genders and ethnicities to join the bank.

On the job experience and a professional qualification are offered alongside wellbeing initiatives for apprentices, such as mental and physical health workshops, mental and first aid help training, and access to a range of bank-wide diversity networks that are open to all employees, spanning:

Pride & Allies: An LGBTQ+ community that works with the Stonewall campaigning organisation to ensure awareness of gay issues at the firm and inclusivity.

Be Me – Race Equity Network: is focused on removing any barriers to progression faced by those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

We Are Young (WAY): network is intended to support young employees at the start of their professional lives, expanding their network and understanding of global business.

Gender network: is designed to help Kleinwort Hambros achieve its Women in Finance Charter pledges to encourage more women into senior positions to reach its target of 50/50 parity by 2025.

Narrowing the gender pay gap is also a priority, which has reduced from 24% down to 18% in three years at Kleinwort Hambros and should continue to fall with the number of initiatives underway at the firm, such as a Gender Equality Forum.

An on-going Diversity Data campaign is also underway at the bank since last year. This metric invites employees to share their gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation and various other characteristics to continue to shape and measure Kleinwort Hambros diversity strategy.

Taishin International Bank launched a data-driven project in 2021 to use ‘big data’ more effectively in a better integrated, updated technology stack that uses Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to analyse customer needs and a real-time personalised marketing platform to meet them. It was Highly Commended (HC) in the Best Next Generation Offering category at the 32nd PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022.

Taishin wanted a better customer management model and realised that this meant enhancing its data import, integration, and application – if it was to meet its aim of providing a better service and moving its marketing efforts from an active to an interactive basis.

The IT and organisational overhaul of how Taishin, headquartered in Taiwan, processes and uses data launched last year, faced two major challenges – namely:

Using unstructured ‘big data’: the financial services (FS) industry has traditionally been better at using structured data internal applications that mine its own information about customers and find data about correspondent FS firms, infrastructures (FMIs) for connectivity purposes, and so on from its own internal sources. Unstructured ‘big data’ emanating from social media, web browsing, voice services, financial market news showing sentiment and trends, and so on is difficult to analyse and apply. But it contains a lot of valuable information. Taishin needed to master ‘big data’ and integrate it into their IT operations. ML was the answer.

Shorter attention spans: modern people receive and process up to 34 gigabytes of information a day, according to a recent study by the University of California, San Diego. This means they may not pay attention to information provided by a bank if it’s in a pre-existing communication pattern that isn’t relevant to their lives anymore – say a postal letter. This adversely impacts the customer experience (CX), satisfaction and marketing responses rates.

Taishin has resolved these issues by adopting new artificial intelligence (AI)-inspired ML systems and techniques. The deep Machine Learning technologies it is now using, such as AutoEncoder neural network and the Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) ML algorithm that can rank, classify and improve data consumption, are helping it transform its operation.

When used in conjunction with a new application, such as a new real-time personalised marketing platform recently introduced, the business benefits of improved data mastery become plain. Marketing response rates, customer satisfaction and ultimately revenues have risen.

An enhanced application programming interface (API) transmission mechanism has also improved the synchronisation of Taishin’s channels to market, and its self-learning, data-driven CX improvement model. It truly now has a next generation, customer-centric service that is fit for the modern age.

The Taurus Wealth Group, founded by Mandeep Nalwa in Singapore in 2008, with its Dubai office led by Bhavnesh Thakkar for the Middle East and Africa region, and office in Zurich, has since its inception serviced high net worth (HNW) clients with a Multi Family Office (MFO) orientation, including a focused East African coverage led by Suhail Moosa: Rising Star award winner at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022. Its MFO approach, and aim to be a close confidante, mean clients need wealth management help from a 360-degree perspective, making very well-trained Relationship Managers (RMs) a necessity. Taurus won the Outstanding RM Training and Development Programme trophy as well.

The Best Practices Programme (BPP) conceived at Taurus Wealth usually runs for 2 months and is conducted three times a year to get its new RMs up to speed with the company’s values and its confidante approach to HNW family wealth management and to help incumbents continually refresh and hone their skills.

Different modules and case studies, gleaned from regularly updated internal source and product material, are held by senior financial advisors (FAs) on a regular, rotated basis. Participation from attendees that challenges the status quo is encouraged. Occasionally, outside speakers from partners are also invited in. Delivery is via weekly ‘parcels’ of hour-long sessions. The group dynamic is seen as essential in communicating success stories, cross-selling opportunities, and getting across the company’s values.

The BPP runs alongside Taurus’ formal induction for newcomers and its annual compliance training programmes, which are both designed to cover the important regulatory and compliance aspects of its policy framework. But the Best Practices Programme is different because the aim is to orientate new joiners to the company’s way of doing things, ensuring excellence and consistency for the client.

Entrusted to a senior FA that has extensive experience in addressing the multifaceted needs of HNW clients, the Programme Champion will always seek inputs from all relevant stakeholders prior to a new cohort taking on the course. This ensures dynamic content and that all material is always up-to-date. Several modules are held, covering:

1. Portfolio management frameworks & client coverage models.
2. In-house managed strategies and product capabilities.
3. Succession & estate planning.
4. Life insurance.
5. Family governance & philanthropy.
6. Managing collectibles & passion assets like art.
7. Residency & alternate citizenship options.
8. Financing & mortgage solutions.
9. Prospecting & pricing – this conveys the value proposition & ensures consistency.
10. Differentiated approach to managing private market allocations and exposures. A partner network overview supports this with fitment criteria.
11. In-house systems – this teaches newcomers how to differentiate by leveraging Taurus’ digital, data reporting & analytical capabilities.

Rising Star: Suhail Moosa

The PBI Rising Star Award was granted to Suhail Moosa, Executive Director of Client Investments for the East African market, out of Taurus Wealth’s offices in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) in Dubai, UAE. He has used his long-standing relationships with the Indian-origin community in Kenya and the surrounding areas to become the top performer for the firm in Dubai in 2021, exceeding his targets and championing new business such as bringing Universal Life insurance front and centre for regional succession planning. [MG1] Moosa also recently organised an event in Nairobi where Taurus’ CEO spoke about the challenging markets in 2022 to a gathering of existing and prospective clients. Afterwards 20% of attendees wanted to meet within three days, while 50% said they’d be in touch.

The former ICICI, Citibank and Mashreq employee had to overcome a number of initial challenges on joining Taurus Wealth in 2020, not the least of which was a need to get up to speed on the family office model, via the BPP course, and an inability to travel due to the Covid-19 restrictions then in place. The MBA graduate of finance, from the ICFAI Business School in Mumbai in 2007, overcame these challenges to deliver results and win numerous testimonials from happy clients. He is leading Taurus’ efforts to grow the East African market, most recently hiring a veteran in the Tanzanian market.

Outside of work, Suhail Moosa is a keen golfer and racket sports participant, and he is the chair of a social and work group comprising of more than 500 Indian families from his hometown in India, which all currently reside in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as he does. He is a trainer himself now on the BPP course at Taurus Wealth and strong advocate for the East African marketplace. [MG1]We do not want this information externally available

BNP Paribas Wealth Management (WM) develops the Group’s Private Banking (PB) model across 19 countries, serving entrepreneurs, family offices, Ultra/High Net Worth Individuals(U/HNWIs) in Asia, the US and Middle-East via 6,800 employees and attaining EUR 422 billion (US$422.3bn) in Assets under Management (AuM) last year, up 8.4%, and a rank of the number one Private Bank in the Euro Zone by AuM thanks to growth in Germany, Italy and other places in its traditional stronghold. Alongside its Francophone base, this won it the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Europe at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2022 and Highly Commended status for HC: Most Innovative Digital Offering thanks to its Private Assets Portal and a number of other new digital services.

BNPP WM attracted EUR2.4 billion in net asset flows last year and is successfully surfing the volatility in this year’s market. As the leading private bank in the Eurozone, BNPP WM continued to accelerate in the Entrepreneurs and Large Families segment across geographies such as Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands in particular. The private Bank will pursue developments over the long term, drawing on their expertise and continuing to take advantage of the Group’s diversified and integrated model so that this clientele fully benefit from synergies with CIB, Asset Management and Real Estate in particular.

Alongside a wide range of products and services in wealth planning, financial management and investments, BNP Paribas WM also offers tailor-made financing and specialised expertise in areas such as real estate, philanthropy, and forests or vineyards. The latter was evident in its annual Agrifrance report on the French rural land market last year, which focused on the issue of renewing young generations in the rural world to maintain locally-grown quality agriculture, arboriculture or viticulture in a modern world that increasingly sees that as a social, rural planning and sustainability issue – not to mention a food sovereignty and security topic since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Sustainability is a key topic, and future growth avenue for BNPP WM, so it has designed a comprehensive sustainable client journey in four steps:

Step1 – myImpact tool: this digital solution helps identify the social and environment subjects that matter to clients, helping them define their investor and/or philanthropist goals. It’s a treasure chest of insights into sustainable development, responsible investment, and philanthropy.

Step2 – Objectives: clients define with their relationship manager (RM) and BNPP WM’s sustainable experts their objectives in terms of risk, return, and impact.

Step3 – Clover rating methodology: Next, clients choose the level of sustainability they want their investments to have; on a scale of 0 to 10 clovers. This unique new rating system across all asset classes rates the sustainability of BNPP WM’s products and gives clients a holistic vision of the sustainability of their entire portfolio. Ready to use or tailor-made philanthropy solutions can be investigated.

Step4 – Decision time: In the final step, BNPP WM proposes concrete sustainable investment solutions to match the clients’ now fully defined and investigated sustainability profile.

Digitalisation

As part of its over-arching client experience (CX) programme, BNPP WM fully launched a Private Assets Portal worldwide in Q3 2022. The platform is dedicated to helping clients in the private equity (PE), real estate and private asset funds area, providing instant access to real-time information regarding the investments they have subscribed to via an electronic e-signature. A 360° view of portfolios with detailed geographies, strategies or currencies is available, alongside breakdowns of the performance of each fund and their consolidated portfolio.

The private bank is also strengthening its events, particularly for millennials via its ‘NextGen Experience: A FastTrack to wealth management’ seminar where participants were invited to debate with WM experts, experience digital innovations, and meet inspiring entrepreneurs to give them investment ideas.

Its post-Covid investment themes for 2022 include:

Riding in a new inflation regime
Identifying winning investments and innovations
Repair, Reuse and Recycle
Small is (still) beautiful
& Enter in the Metaverse

Centrum Wealth won the Best Family Office trophy at the 32nd Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022, held on 6 October 2022.

Key factors which led to the firm qualifying for this award, are the enhancements made around what Centrum considers the 3Ps of its proposition – People, Products and Platform. Thus, the investments Centrum Wealth has made over the years and continues to make in its people, its proven investment services platform, and especially its estate and legacy planning vertical have delivered rich dividends. These are also amongst the key reasons for India’s wealthy to choose Centrum Wealth for Family Office services.

The firm’s efforts to grow its overall business were also Highly Commended by the judges in the Outstanding Wealth Management Service for the Affluent category.

The fact that India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world is well known. This growth is fuelling the creating of unicorns and increasing monetisation opportunities for a set of individual entrepreneurs.

This ecosystem of talented rich entrepreneurs and professionals recognise the need for professional management while handling investments. Thus providing a long runway of growth for wealth managers who have the right proposition backed by the right people such as Centrum Wealth.

There is also a potent mass affluent market for with those employed with start-ups, tech services and financial services firms. As the per capita income of the country grows and higher levels of wealth pervade, the entry to wealth segment becomes a conduit to the higher wealth segments.

There is a ripe wealth management (WM) market country across the various ascending segments of the value chain from emerging or mass affluent, to the HNI to the UHNWI or Family Office.

The return of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and surging availability of local capital from both institutional and private investors, aided by family offices that control greater wealth as the nation advances, promises growth for the sector.

The stage is set for Centrum Wealth which understands the Indian Wealth market, to capture a larger slice of the Indian Wealth and Family Office pie. In order to achieve this objective, Centrum has fine-tuned certain areas of the offering such as:

Ability to create solutions to cater to increasing liquidity: is accessible to India’s ever-expanding business families as the economy advances and investment structures evolve in evermore complex ways.

Bolstering domain expertise: to equip the relationship teams on guiding Indian HNI/UHNWI families on softer aspects and fundamentals such as how to optimise a portfolio of stocks, fixed income, cash, commodity, real estate and other structured products to get better risk adjusted returns.

Higher RM longevity leading to higher share of wallet: Almost three-quarters (73%) of Centrum’s relationship managers (RMs) and its upper echelon private bankers have been with the firm for three years. It is retaining their expertise, even as productivity advances 56% year-on-year (YoY) thanks to investments supporting technology.

Superior estate and legacy planning expertise: has become essential as pioneering elder family member’s age, inheritance and structuring needs become more complex. This is particularly true as more tech-savvy and internationally-minded younger members of a potential UHNWI family, are better exposed to Global trends having worked, or been educated abroad, taking over businesses and seeking more data driven decision making. Further while conventional wealth services have become par for the course, demand for differentiated investment, tax, offshore and other such options are growing to reflect their globe-trotting lifestyles.

Centrum offers Family business advisory services with Tax structuring solutions, Estate and succession planning and Offshore solutions via a Singapore office and partnerships in the UK, US & elsewhere.

Clients have specific investment policy statements and family objectives that Centrum Wealth can help to create and then deliver solutions by sourcing and structuring appropriate investments. A product evaluation and advisory unit staffed by domain experts helps here. This ‘next generation’ friendly team can advise on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, if that interests youngsters, as it increasingly does. Other functional teams include:

Investment and review committee: providing strategic direction and overall supervision for the business and its Family Office client investments and processes. Regular reviews of suitability, performance analysis and highlighting of any deviations keep programmes on track. The committee also suggests risk management and control systems.

Engagement team: provides day-to-day engagement, report and data, communication & implementation of recommendations from the central Investment Recommendation & Product Team, against the client portfolio. They make the firm’s ability to provide bespoke and holistic solutions real for the client.

Ultra high net worth (UNHW) Family Office clients have recognised the need for professional guidance on estate planning and structuring services with wills, gifting, trusts, governance through to family bonds, and more sophisticated structures for holding and transferring assets. Centrum Wealth has grown its presence in this segment within just a few years since its inception to more than US$1 billion in client assets.

In this Q&A interview with Fernando Beyruti, Head Global, at Itaú Private Bank, he discusses its results and plans to change technologically, via increased reliance on cloud computing and data analytics, and culturally via better positioning and digital tools for clients, and a new business model with five key pillars.

Q1. Briefly provide an overview of your year & company’s status: financially and in the marketplace?

A1. Itaú Private Bank is the largest PB in Brazil and top three in Latin America. We have managed the volatile market in the first half of the year well, mitigating risk and spotting opportunities for clients as we responded to economic changes wrought by the socioeconomic crisis in Latin America, the war in Ukraine and on-going Covid lockdowns in China adversely impacting supply chains and oil, gas and commodity prices, causing inflation, rising interest rates (IR) and other global impacts. Change is a constant in our industry and volatility can be a virtue if you know how to handle it and have good risk management practices in place. Embracing change can be a good thing.

Itaú Private Bank had a market share of 28% in Brazil at the end H1 2022. Our Assets under Management (AuM) have increased by 17% per year since 2015. Similarly, our revenue increased by 14% per year in the same period. Net income grew by 21% year-on-year (YoY) over the last six years, for an annual growth rate of 19%.

Itaú PB’s results testify to our strength and ability to adapt to change in the financial market, in the global economy, and to long-term wealth management (WM) trends, such as the concentration of money in ultra and high net worth (U / HNW) individuals and families.

Responding to change whether it is market or technology-driven is in our DNA, as is maintaining the quality, training and dedication of our team to deliver a good return and customer experience (CX) to clients. Culturally, we’re changing too in regard to how we position ourselves geographic and in niche markets like Agro, and Tech, which is important sectors in Brazil – to get the best out of them.

Q2. Tell us about your cultural & other changes that are underway?

A2. The aim is always to get close to the customer, cooperate with Itaú specialist teams and its retail banking arm to feed the ascending value chain, corporate, trading and other units of the bank to give the most effective CX in the most efficient manner. For instance, that means using the digital self-service tools developed by Itaú in a suitably amended from to improve CX and meet customer demands for instant data and analytics that is available 24×7. This also frees up relationship manager’s (RM) time to do more value-adding tasks, especially if they too have access to better, faster automated data flows.

We want to offer an integrated product with added value that will last for generations, so that means serving our core Latin American (LatAm) constituency locally but also globally, reflecting their propensity to travel and live abroad. Our offshore, position in major global financial centres, and private market capabilities round out Itaú PB’s offering, alongside our wealth planning, succession and other such services.

We can pivot to meet national economic advances or retreats and allocate resources accordingly. The same is true as the marketplace pivots towards using sustainability metrics in its investment platforms. A nimble, mobile workforce and flexible IT infrastructure means you can meet whatever challenges are thrown your way.

That is why we are conducting detailed studies of each region we operate in, analysing the market, competition, service provision and asset growth options – which may not be the same as before, as some clients increasingly want to specify environmental, social, and governance (ESG) parameters into their portfolios. Asset growth v quality longer-term growth is becoming a factor for some. Geopolitics are changing global economic interactions as well from Ukraine and Europe to Asia and beyond, so you need to be aware of the differing economic and investment impacts. New hiring drives will result from our research as we target growth wherever we find it.

Q3. Tell us about your business model changes?

A3. To respond to the challenges I’ve already outlined, we at Itaú PB are constantly improving our business model to ensure a long-term profitable future for us and our clients, who we obviously want to keep deeply engaged with us. It is based on five pillars:

1. Wealth planning: UHNW wealth concentrates the need to perpetuate clients’ legacies for future generations. The wealth planning team provides holistic advice that is tailored to the needs and characteristics of each family group. They will be a key part of Itaú PB’s future growth.
2. ESG investments: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) themes are increasingly prominent for our clients and therefore on Itaú’s agenda as well. We have developed a platform with more than 145 ESG products, in various asset classes. This meets client’s wishes, as well making us prepared for more climate change-induced carbon offset schemes and demands for social well-being via the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other such mechanisms.
3. Tailored solutions based on a structured investment process: Investment processes must move through well-defined stages that are aligned with client needs and objectives. This allows our team to continuously review and update the investment strategy and tailor products to each client’s need. Our renewed focus here will deepen and strengthen our relationship with clients and drive further growth.
4. Consistent results with a long-term vision: To cultivate long-term relationships, one must approach investing from a long-term perspective as well. This is particularly true for family office relationships, a key growth area, so we are re-designing our reward metrics, training and cultural emphasis to emphasise a long-term focus for big consistent rewards. Succession planning, real estate, private markets and so forth are all important in sustaining wealth in volatile times as well.
5. A ‘one-stop shop’ with a wide open platform: Flexible IT systems and a partnership approach gives clients’ an open investment platform powered by application programming interfaces (API) data exchange mechanisms that provide access to a multitude of investment products from all the best houses in the market. There is also expert curation and support from advisors and Itaú PB’s consolidated financial services platform – including Itaú BBA, Itaú Asset Management and other arms of the universal bank – ensure convenient, easy IT access and service provision.

Q4. Tell us about your new technology stance?

A4. Itaú Private Bank has been given a sizable budget this year to develop a better digital platform for its clients and staff. We will be able to repurpose and reuse some of their self-service and analytic tools to help clients and RMs access more granular data instantly 24×7. These self-serve tools will also simplify our team’s day-to-day responsibilities, freeing up more time for them to attend to important estate-planning work without compromising the efficiency and personal touch we are known for.

The new Ion Itaú investment app is an example of what we want to achieve. Using Ion Itaú, customers can follow market news, view their investment and profitability history, and even invest in variable income assets, as if they were at a home brokerage. To increase CX convenience, the app will also consolidate information from multiple accounts and brokers, not just Itaú PB accounts, thanks to the use of open APIs. This means clients can keep track of all their investments in one place. More features are being added all the time.

Our IT platforms are currently being reconfigured for cloud computing, which is the most appropriate IT hosting infrastructure for the entrepreneurial approach that we culturally want to institute at the bank. The cloud can scale computing power up and down to meet demand efficiently and allows easier data mining, as it overcomes legacy IT siloes that could previously trap information behind departmental borders. New digital tools can be more easily and quickly added as well, especially in the open API-enabled era that we are entering where data exchange and orchestration is becoming ever more important.

Good data management and mastery leads to good data analytics and presentation, which is another key focus for us as it can help identify opportunities in a timely manner and target offers and invitations appropriately, especially if artificial intelligence (AI) data crunching tools and automation are used. Itaú PB has developed models and new data tools to ensure it can enhance CX and information flows for RMs, helping them deliver more:

Personalisation of services.
Identification of potential customers.
Anticipation of client issues and opportunities & quick responsiveness.

This cloud-enabled data-centric approach to its future, combined with its cultural overhaul mean that Itaú Private Bank is undergoing profound change – and is ready to meet the challenges of the future.

In this Q&A interview with Sanah Gumede, Head of Wealth & Investment, South Africa for High Net Worth (HNW) individuals in Standard Bank’s home market, she discusses the help she provides to aid generational wealth transfer, which has become more challenging as interest rates (IR), inflation and commodities rise in the face of geopolitical volatility. The married mother of two children who loves golf, food and the bush countryside of her native South Africa is convinced getting closer to the client and improving their experience (CX) is always the right response to overcoming any challenges.

Q1. What are your short- and long-term hopes & fears?

A1. Well, personally I obviously want my family to always be safe and happy. Professionally speaking, I worry about wealth leaching away from the HNW individuals and families that I and my team at Standard Bank Wealth and Investment in South Africa (SA), serve. Research has shown that:

70% of generational wealth gets depleted by the second generation;
& 90% is gone by the third generation.

It’s my job to prevent that happening. Succession planning and assistance is vital for HNWIs. My ambition is to partner with clients in creating, managing, and preserving generational wealth by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, structures, and tools. That way you can overcome any challenges.

Q2. How can you protect your clients’ wealth against your fear of it leaching away?

A2. I believe Standard Bank can do that by focusing tightly on the client experience (CX), by understanding their needs and advising them well, in a deep relationship that offers solutions to suit their particular needs. There are always investment and succession options from private market bonds to equities, offshore options, trusts, tax advice and other means of growing, preserving, and transferring wealth but each case is different, so you need to understand what options to select from the toolbox for each client.

At Standard Bank Wealth and Investment SA, the unit I head up, we focus on delighting our clients and delivering superior CX. That is always our aim as I believe it delivers the best results. If you align the people (training and staff), technology (data, context, and presentation) and the strategy for growing and protecting wealth with a laser-like focus on the client’s well-being, then you cannot go wrong.

We are therefore investing in bespoke CX using our people and data to ensure we understand the passions and interests of our clients. We can then curate events aligned to meet their interests and advise them accordingly about relevant strategies.

Q3. What challenges do you face in delivering CX, & indeed from the wider market overall?

A3. Recruitment is always an issue. It is difficult to find the right people with the necessary on and offshore financial services (FS) exposure and experience that we want. They must be able to interact with our profile of client but finding them is not easy as many have gone offshore themselves and not returned. We train people accordingly and are always on the lookout for the right individuals, but it is something we continuously have to monitor to ensure we have the best people in order to deliver the best CX.

We also need to ensure that mobile access and technology solutions that offer self-service and analytics updates are available if the customer wants them, while simultaneously ensuring that deeper data can be got from our IT systems for relationship managers (RMs) to engage clients proactively. This requires flexible IT, which we’ve invested in.

In regard to the wider market and general challenges, well, a more cautious approach to investment is necessary at the moment in light of the severe economic changes that are arising from the present geopolitical turmoil.

Q4. What geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges do you face?

A4. Globally speaking, we have had the Covid-19 pandemic of course impacting supply chains and now there is the war in Ukraine. This is pushing up global energy prices and food and commodities, impacting inflation and therefore interest rates (IR), which are on the rise around the world.

The US Dollar’s (USD) appreciation is also impacting foreign exchange (FX) calculations. The risk environment has fundamentally changed. As always, this presents opportunities as well as threats, but a more cautious approach is valid at the moment.

Rising IR has an impact on disposal investable income from a cost of debt viewpoint as well as a cost of goods perspective, due to the inflationary pressure, so a lot of things are interacting at present. Not to mention the climate change / net zero policy framework, farming impacts and well-being aspects of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda in mines, factories and elsewhere, which is also altering traditional investment approaches.

We need to be on top of all these things at Standard Bank Wealth and Investment, SA – and we are. We also face local macroeconomic factors such an expanding population that need jobs, and an expanding middle and upper class that need wealth advice. The latter may well face a squeeze in the years ahead, so our advice will be needed more than ever as ultra HNWIs accelerate away and the rest struggle.

I have noticed a worldwide trend recently, in the face of all these pressures, for clients to keep funds received in cash and only gradually phase that capital into equity markets. Where clients’ intention is towards a longer-term equity investment there is understandably no rush on their part to put the majority of their money into equity markets at the moment. Clients are instead spreading their risk around and only drip-feeding money into the equity arena when and if they see long-term opportunities.

Q5. Tell us a bit about yourself: your career progression and personal interests?

A5. I am a seasoned banker and executive with over 17 years in the financial services industry. I worked at Investec Private Bank (PB) and ABSA Wealth in South Africa before joining Standard Bank in 2017 as the Head of Wealth Management for Johannesburg.

I attained my present position as Head of High Net Worth at Standard Bank SA in January 2021. In this role, I am responsible for a team of RMs, loan and fiduciary specialists and wealth managers. Our vision is to be the financial partner of choice for Africa’s HNWIs, managing, growing, and protecting the generational wealth of our clients and their families by offering tailored, integrated solutions, that deliver because we understand the client and have deep intelligent relationships. Superior client experience ultimately delivers superior results.

I started out at Ernst & Young (EY) in January 2001 at the dawn of a new millennium as a junior auditor and was subsequently an analyst at the South African Empowerdex Ratings Agency, before entering the FS sector where I’ve remained ever since.

My experience spans to include private banking, wealth and investment, strategy development, leadership, building networks and client value propositions, plus client relationship management and marketing strategies.

My education begun in Pretoria in South Africa at school and deepened at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Durban, where I graduated in accounting. Additionally, I completed the Global Executive MBA at INSEAD Business School, Fontainebleau France, and I’ve also completed a Finance Executive Development Programme at the London Business School. I am an alumnus of the Institute of International Finance where I was part of the Future Leaders Class of 2019, held in both Shanghai, China, and Washington DC in the US.

I use all this knowledge I’ve obtained in the service of our clients, and in overcoming the challenges I’ve outlined from war to climate change, to changing demographics and technology. Change is constant. Customer excellence must be too.

Mashreq Private has won the prestigious accolade of ‘Outstanding Private Bank: Middle East’ at the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2022.

To be eligible as a Mashreq Private client, one must maintain relationship greater than USD 1 million. Half of Mashreq Private’s ultra or high net worth individual (U/HNWI) clients hold over AED30m+ (US$8.17m), while 5% possess AED 50m+ (US$13.61m) with diverse geographies around the world: 40% non-resident and 60%residents are in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A quarter are Western expats, 25% UAE nationals, 25% Arab, and 15% from the Indian sub-continent, with other expats making up the rest.

Additionally, a ‘golden visa’ helpdesk is available to assist clients apply for UAE’s 10-year visa. Further, we also offer accounts in Egypt and the Middle East, offshore options and value-added services w.r.t trust and inheritance, family office and more. The personal touch is invaluable to understand the clientele’s diverse needs and cultures. Mashreq Private has an extensive team of certified relationship managers (RMs), qualified investment and insurance specialists, foreign exchange (FX) specialists and client service managers offering bespoke wealth structuring, planning, legacy planning, and lending, to name a few. Our staff are highly experienced, with 40% of Private Bankers having decades of experience, ensuring human touch is never forgotten.

Technology

At Mashreq we align personal touch with digitally enhanced, easy to access solutions. Mashreq Private has a robust and integrated wealth management platform offering end to end solution for range of Investment products including Equities, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Certificate of Deposits, Structured Products.

This improves relationship manager’s efficacy , ensuring superior customer experience (CX). It also enhances bank’s ability to serve its diverse client base, giving them access from wherever they are in the world. For example, clients can now trade local and international equities across 32 markets and access 150,000 funds via their wealth management (WM) platforms.

The use of open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) help consolidate multiple systems on the new wealth management platforms providing seamless connectivity and value-added services, such as automated chart provision and enhanced portfolio analytics. Our fintech partners like Comarch and FinIQ are offering improved client interface and portfolio reporting capabilities. While clients who want to keep their investments offshore can now more easily do so via Open IT Architecture investment platforms that connect to trust structures out of Bermuda and Guernsey, aiding long-term wealth transfer and estate planning.

The IT architectural approach adopted at Mashreq Private encourages:

Customer-centric channel design: Built inhouse these are client self operated, mobile & online banking and assisted channels via Relationship managers leveraging SAAS based components, enabling seamless and consistent customer experience across all touchpoints

Cloud Infrastructure: All new applications are setup on flexible, secure and elastic cloud infrastructure enabling innovation through on demand processing power and throughput. Migration of existing applications to cloud in being done in phased approach
DevOps & Microservices architecture: In order to deliver fast and high-quality changes to customer experience channels Mashreq Private has leveraged automated deployment and testing on loosely coupled microservice architecture backed by an API driven integration to enable flexibility and speed

Finally, Thanks to its corporate and investment banking arms, Mashreq Securities and the Mashreq Capital division at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Mashreq Private can easily structure products that cater to the individual and unique needs of its HNWI clients present in the UAE and anywhere across the globe – as one bank.

People matter. However good technology and support systems are if the client interaction is good then a private bank will inevitably grow and attract newcomers. Many outstanding individuals were recognized at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 but to pick some out Hana Bank in Korea was particularly noteworthy with two winners – Hyeonjoo Kim & Byungju Kim – in the Outstanding Private Banker: Regional Players category.

Byungju Kim is a Certified Investment Manager, with specializations in real estate and hedge funds, and an Accredited Retirement Planning Specialist (ARPS) who has long experience in the industry and has been a private banker (PB) with Hana Bank in Korea since 2014. Prior to that he worked for the bank in the trust department for 12 years managing diversified investment products like specified money in trust and bond-type trusts. His knowledge of portfolios and dealing with investment products was what particularly caught the judges’ eye. He helped to expand the role of exchange traded funds (ETFs) at the private bank, developing a product and investment system, and an equity and short-term bond for the area, to catch some of the flow in this marketplace, thereby expanding clients’ investment and risk options.

Customized products for very important people (VIP) clients are also a specialty, often using external financial institutions (FIs) or internal subsidiaries within the Hana Financial Group, depending upon what is required. His knowledge and nous have been deployed to attract ultra high-net worth individuals (UNHWI), with US$10 million, to the private bank and in one particular instance, in 2018, he attracted a corporate customer to the unit that had recently received US$220m from selling off corporate shares.

Hyeonjoo Kim has been a Private Banker at Hana Bank in Korea since 2011. He is also ARPS accredited for retirement planning, and additionally is a Certified financial planner (CFP) and foreign exchange specialist (CFES).

Foreign direct investment (FDI) corporate fund facilitating is a specialty in how it can relate to releasing money for real estate deals. For instance, he provided a domestic Korean corporation with the ability to establish an overseas subsidiary in the USA to increase its capital base there for real estate investments, which transferred over US$5.3 million. Comprehensive real estate advisory services were also provided for a local subsidiary in China, which invested US$22m into an equity investment vehicle. On the buy-side, a commercial real estate corporation raised US$40.5m in corporate finance after receiving advisory services. An overseas corporation preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) got investment engagement help via introductions to local venture capital (VC) money, receiving US$5m.

Hana Bank customers resident in Canada were also helped by this outstanding private banker to buy local real estate through a mortgage loan raised against a deposit in Korea. This utilized the full global reach and network of the Hana Financial Group. Separately, a corporate owner got portfolio and asset management assistance and advice about how to increase capital by issuing new stock, and how to then use the money raised to invest in securities.

Hana Bank’s Korean experts can help customers domestically and internationally to get the most out of their wealth. These few examples show why two of their colleagues were recognized as outstanding private bankers, headquartered in the Asian region, at the Private Banker International (PBI): Global Wealth Awards 2021.

Kasikornbank Private Banking designs all services using 3-S strategies, spanning: (i) the S-Curve, denoting fast growth in tech for instance; (ii) Sharing, which covers charitable giving and legacies; & (iii) Sustainability, which prepares clients for the coming Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment environment where carbon net zero goals, social responsibility and so on will be key considerations and growth drivers. It is this strategic approach that saw the bank Highly Commended (HC) at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 as an Outstanding Private Bank: Southeast Asia and Best Bank for Sustainability and ESG Leadership – Corporate Strategy.

The commendations are for far-sighted the far-sighted S-strategies and the way they are aligned with mutual funds and other investment options to engage clients in thinking about the future, where to find growth, and what legacy they want to leave behind.

(i) S-Curve: A mathematical term that in business can denote fast growth, Kasikornbank Private Banking uses it to identify ‘New Economy’ businesses, such as fast expanding tech or online firms, that its clients can invest in. The K-HIT, ONEUGG and PE TECH are the leading mutual funds in this category and, as these are necessarily new economy businesses, clients can easily access profits from global trends. The new economy concept has been disseminated via seminars, video clips, articles and so, providing a path to the funds.

A Real Estate Advisory team has also separately been formed to offer fast growth non-capital market solutions. It works with the Family Wealth Planning and Investment Advisory teams to provide effective solutions.

(ii) Sharing: According to Kasikornbank’s research, most high-net worth individuals (HNWIs) face trouble in searching, diversifying and choosing charities they want to help, after they’ve successfully grown wealth and preserved it. That is why it is part of the bank’s strategic vision to set up a team that can establish charities and why they also help charities themselves invest for the longer-term. Educational events, and speakers from the third sector, government and clients, are also facilitated to encourage donations to worthy causes and encourage clear-sighted policies.

(iii) Sustainability: internally at the bank also means educating clients about professional management and portfolio diversification to smooth out volatility and assure a sustainable return. But the key issue is product selection and getting investors to be aware of and support ESG social and environmental goals. Not only for their worth in themselves, but because they offer fast growth as developed government’s set carbon net zero goals driving future multinationals’ considerations. Kasikornbank Private Banking offers clients its K-CHANGE, K-HIT, and K-CLIMATE mutual funds for these reasons. It also hosted a seminar from former US Vice President, Al Gore, a renowned environmental activist, to share his knowledge and insights in this area with participants.

Technology is an important enabler for Kasikornbank Private Banking in delivering its strategic S-messages to clients and filling its funds, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when video, online seminars and so on came to the fore as a means of communicating with clients in lockdown. The bank developed a YouTube TV Channel populated with regular updates from experts, Facebook messaging, and a Line messaging app group to keep clients informed remotely and regularly during the pandemic, which is now an on-going benefit.

Quintet Private Bank was Highly Commended in the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Europe category at the 31st annual staging of the Private Banker International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2021, held virtually on 8 October due to Covid-19. The bank has used new funding to acquire and consolidate its European-based global wealth management (WM) and investment offering, delivering a 16% uptick in revenues last year to EUR513 million (US$594.1m) despite the pandemic.

Quintet Private Bank, headquartered in Luxembourg, operates in 50 European cities. It caters to wealthy individuals and families, as well as a broad range of institutional and professional clients, including family offices, foundations and external asset managers.

Founded in 1949, it rebranded last year as it entered new markets and recruited 350 staff to its 2,000 rollcall, tapping new funding – including the placement of EUR125 million (US$146m) in AT1 notes – in order to pursue growth, and attracting higher fees and commission income to reward its efforts. Total client assets rose to EUR85 billion (US$98.4 bn) as of 31 December 2020, up from EUR81.5 billion at the end of 2019.

Expansion included via the acquisition of Bank am Bellevue in Zurich to form Quintet Switzerland. Staff numbers doubled to 80 by year end, as the newcomer sought to carve out a niche by offering a comprehensive advisory approach and the agility of a relatively small player. This is allied to state-of-the art asset allocation and truly open architecture that allows multi-booking capabilities and true cross-border capabilities.

In October 2020, Quintet opened a branch in Copenhagen: Quintet Danmark, which is focused on meeting the long-term wealth management needs of local individuals and their families. It combines a highly personalized approach with independent advice and open-architecture investment solutions. Similarly, it has doubled staff numbers, to 10 in this case. It supports its activities via alignment with the Nordics Desk in Luxembourg.

It combines a highly personalized approach with independent advice and open-architecture investment solutions.

Consolidating operations and raising brand awareness are among its key aims. In December last year, for instance, Quintet finalized the merger of its EU-based subsidiaries, forming a single business unit known as ‘Quintet Europe’. This reduces organizational complexity and increases efficiency, allowing clients to benefit from shorter lines of communication, more rapid decision-making, and faster service. A one-bank approach is better than a lot of smaller subsidiaries.

A single House View has been implemented whereby Quintet’s chief investment officer (CIO) articulates the firm’s view about how clients should be invested, dependent on their portfolio and risk appetite. The Counterpoint publication and Solutions offer clients specific ideas about how to invest their wealth in a portfolio.

Sustainable investment is a priority too and should be the default choice in the long-term as the world moves towards net carbon zero. Investing in companies that are better prepared for the impact on their business of climate change can improve performance. Those that have built resiliency and manage the associated risks more carefully are likely to offer an improved risk/reward ratio to investors.

HSBC Global Private Banking (PB) for ultra & high-net worth individuals (U-HNWI) serves clients in North Asia and throughout the area via onshore hubs in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, plus there are other Asian onshore hubs further afield in Singapore and Thailand. Clients can additionally access HSBC’s worldwide universal banking services, including lending, corporate finance, capital markets in London and globally. Its comprehensive approach and group-wide capabilities won it the Outstanding Global Private Bank: North Asia trophy at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021.

The HSBC Group has 4000+ offices in 64 countries, but it never forgets its local offer, and it partners where it is in the best interests of clients wanting to access deals. Dedicated wealth advisory teams in North Asia include relationship managers (RM), investment counsellors (IC), product specialists, credit advisors and wealth planners (WP) in China, Japan and elsewhere, all assigned to serving providing expertise and helping PB clients in the region.

The wealth planning & advisory (WPA) and trust & fiduciary services (TFA) units have served generations of Asian families with a full range of wealth structuring and advisory services, including succession planning, family governance, family office, philanthropy and trust administration.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, which necessitated extensive use of its digital platform and its flagship Investment Outlook events going virtual, HSBC Global PB Asia still recorded growth in client assets of 16% and growth in investment revenues of 24% last year. Its aim is to be the biggest wealth manager (WM) for U-HNWIs in Asia over the next five years, with a target of more than 10% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenues and profit before tax (PBT).

Towards this goal it has grown UHNW and its Total Client Position (TCP) revenues respectively by 15% and 7% last year versus 2019 figures. This growth is thanks to a team that offers tailored asset class agnostic solutions and provides differentiated investment ideas, customized hedging solutions and innovative financing alternatives, to cater to its clients’ sophisticated needs. In 2021, the bank unveiled a new Institutional Family Office for family clients, for instance, providing easier access to its Global Banking & Markets (GBM) capabilities to access institutional markets and private deals that once would have been out of reach. Other ways it intends to grow are by:

Leveraging its universal banking model to feed its PB: collaborating with HSBC businesses globally works. Commercial banking and global markets brought in 48% of new net money in 2020 – see example above for how the model works – and enhanced product capabilities allow easy access to finance, asset management tools and so on, while retaining PB advice and skills.

Emphasizing its PB coverage area & Asia International Connectivity Team: extensive Chinese language skills and Asian experience means the connectivity team can connect clients to offices and capabilities in the UK, Switzerland, East / West coats of America and elsewhere around the world, helping them to acquire assets and real estate overseas. For example, in 2020 a UHNWI in Hong Kong was helped to acquire a trophy property asset in London, securing an 8-figure amount of net new money for the business.

Digitalization: Since the second half of 2020, HSBC has accelerated its digitalization delivering many new platform enhancements and upgrades, including: An online trading platform for cash equities.

Real-time transfers between retail and PB accounts.

A digital platform for market update videos and audio conferencing, which was especially useful during the Covid-19 outbreak.
A new portfolio and risk analytics system for our advisory business.

Going forward, HSBC will invest US$100m in the next two years to further enhance its digital platform and advisory engine.

The Covid-19 pandemic was one of the biggest challenges of recent decades. Clients needed wealth managers, as never before, to navigate the volatility and still deliver results. Julius Baer stepped up to the mark with its work from home (WFH) solutions for staff ensuring constant communication, enhanced digital services for clients, and a tight focus on the markets, and longer-term on sustainability, delivering profits despite the challenges. Consequently, it won the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Global trophy at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 on 8 October.

Julius Baer had more interactions and touchpoints with clients than ever before during the Covid-19 pandemic, but its scalable IT infrastructure and years of investment delivered resilience, while well-trained employees responded knowledgeably to the volatility in the marketplace. Its global presence also helped to maintain contact and services.

When clients do well, so does the firm. It saw operating income rise 7.7% and profits go up by a fifth, while new net money (NNT) it brought in stood at CHF9.9 billion Swiss Francs (US$10.7bn) on 30 June 2021 versus CHF5bn the year before. The inflows show how client trust equates to money coming in.

Julius Baer has an open architecture to give clients access to the best solutions in the market and strong in-house capabilities for investments, credit, structuring and wealth planning. It enhanced its solution set in two keyways in 2020:

Family Office Services: this new unit puts everything under one roof. Key topics such as family purpose, governance, family roadmaps, succession planning and networking are all now in a single comprehensive suite, alongside advisory processes.
Establishing a direct investment team for private investments: the extensive network of the team gave clients easy and quick access to exclusive institutional deal opportunities and the launch of new co-investment vehicles promises much as well in the future. The bank simultaneously grew its secured structured and cashflow-based lending businesses as well.

Technology

Julius Baer activated a raft of home working solutions to help its relationship managers (RMs) and others stay in touch during the Covid-19 emergency and its DiAS digital advisory suite has been particularly helpful. In 2020 it invested CHF90 million (US$97.5m). Much of it was spent on enhancing online procedures and clients’ digital experience. Key initiatives included:

Digital on-boarding of clients in Switzerland via video identification

Electronic e-signature functionality

Two-way online and video chat capabilities. A hybrid interaction model has been built, so that face-to-face options are still there for people that want it and to give flexibility as Covid-19 restrictions ease.
Investments in data intelligence to personalize interactions and optimize pricing have also been made, and money has gone into artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to help AI-driven processing automation. This is enhancing numerous systems. For example, the Markets Toolbox was introduced 10 years ago offering real-time structuring capabilities in foreign exchange (FX). It has since been applied to other structured products and rolled out in Asia. It is now being augmented with AI and big data analytics to add yet more value to private and institutional clients and evolve its capabilities still further.

Sustainable investment products and solutions are a key focus.

A new modularized Mandate Solution Designer has also been unveiled in the area of discretionary mandates as part of the bank’s investment in technology. It will tailor investments and enhance reporting and transparency capabilities.

Sustainability

Sustainable investment products and solutions are a key focus. Julius Baer is a signatory of the UN principles of responsible investment and its responsible banking principles. A proprietary Impact Investment fund in 2020, focused on the emerging blue ocean economy agenda, also addresses three of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – namely: responsible consumption; climate action; and protecting life below water. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors are also now integral to Julius Baer’s investment process, as it seeks to grow the share of its assets invested with explicit ESG integration. It is also supporting training and communities in this area and, as data standards evolve, it will undoubtedly participate in more dedicated reporting in this area as funds increasingly flow into it.

In this Q&A interview with Masroor Batin, the Head of BNP Paribas’ Wealth Management (WM) Middle East & Africa (MEA) unit in Dubai, UAE, the Indian educated graduate from the University of Calcutta talks about this strategic plan for the bank, and his vision & key interlocking aims to nurture clients, grow and, where appropriate, accelerate digitalization.

Please tell us about yourself, your career & plans for the private bank?

I graduated from the University of Calcutta, India. Before coming to the UAE, I lived and worked in three countries – the US, India and Singapore. Each place had its own lessons for me, experiences and cultural twists. I’ve benefitted from their combined wisdom and strengths. In 2017, I moved from Singapore to Dubai with my wife and son.

In the City State I was formerly the Head of International and non-resident India (NRI) clients for BNP Paribas WM, leading the team there and in Hong Kong. Previously, I worked for Merrill Lynch as their Singapore and Malaysia market head, and I also had three years in India leading their online platform. I’ve also enjoyed 10 years in New York as an NRI market director for Merrill and Citibank.

My plans for BNP Paribas WM Middle East & Africa (MEA) is to build on our long-established position here. We’ve been in the region since the early 1970s demonstrating a long-standing commitment to the economic development of the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and to the wider region. The MEA unit now serves more than 900 clients through its 40 experienced bankers located across the UAE, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Saudi Arabia.

Over the next three years, from 2022-2025, I want to see:

New bankers join our platform.
A continued increase in assets.
A strengthening of our client base, especially on-boarding of high-profile clients and families in the NRI and other segments.
Launch new products that meet clients’ needs, such as local shares financing.

But I also want to see digital solutions that offer self-serve options, where wanted, and data analysis, while still retaining the personal touch that clients want. Technology must serve our interactions, not dominate them. The human aspect will always be important, despite the digitalization trend that we undoubtedly must also cater for.

What are the pillars that you intend to use to drive growth?

In the short term, we need to pursue our growth path in a sustainable way, year-after-year, respecting the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 crisis and our longer-term goals. I’m proud of the way my employees still delivered superior client experiences (CX) during the pandemic despite often working from home or facing other challenges. But the outbreak has also strengthened the case for more digital services and internal capabilities. In the coming years, we need to transform in order to grow, accelerate our digital journey, and continue to nurture clients.

The three key pillars I will base this strategic vision on, which is backed by an organizational ambition to become a top five player in the Wealth Management industry, are:

Client engagement & digitalization: every project that we start, every individual strategy that we define must start with the client. We want to make sure that our clients are satisfied and that we provide them with best-in-class services. That is the basic starting point for everything, including the digitalization drive that must not supersede human relationships. Video conferencing, mobile applications and online events can all help, however, particularly during disruptive periods like the Covid-19 outbreak. They’re not a panacea, but they are helpful.

Sustainability & future growth: BNP Paribas is ‘the bank for a changing world’ – and the world is transitioning fast towards a more sustainable economic model. The ecological, socio-economic and energy challenges are immense, as carbon net zero ambitions driven globally by Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance (ESG) policies and investments proliferate across the developed world. Locally, we will need to continue our transformation in order to support our clients in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) journey, be exemplary ourselves, and aware of the context in the region.

People engagement & nurturing skills: People are the most valuable asset. They represent the firm to our clients and are the driving force for our vision and ambitions. We must never forget this. I am very proud of all my teams, and I will make sure in the future to give them a job where they can take decisions, be creative, evolve, grow, and feel committed and rewarded.

Tell us about the base you are building on & BNP Paribas MEA’s performance?

When I first joined BNP Paribas as Head of Wealth Management for the Middle East market in 2017, we launched a very comprehensive and ambitious strategic plan to achieve these results. They have come about by focusing on CX and engagement. Specifically, we implemented:

A new market approach to better serve clients irrespective of the internal organization of BNP Paribas WM.
An upgraded suite of products & services, with digital options, designed to meet the needs of our clients.
A new sales management department. This has improved the way we target, communicate & engage with our clients.

Over my four years in charge of BNP Paribas MEA in Dubai, the key financials have improved. For instance:

Assets under Management (AuM) have on average increased by 12% per year.
The loan book has increased significantly.
Double digit growth is evident in our revenues.

The development of our commercial teams in Dubai and Geneva, Switzerland, continues apace. A dozen new relationship managers (RMs) have been hired.

What are the key strengths of the MEA unit: What are you & the bank overall doing well?

Without doubt, the ‘One Bank’ integrated approach of BNP Paribas is at the heart of our value proposition, alongside our credit and investment offerings. In MEA this means we can leverage the Group’s capabilities to better serve our clients. Our bankers are backed by a team of experts who personalize and adapt BNP Paribas Group’s solutions to serve client’s key life events and any goals they might have, such as pursuing socially responsible investing (SRI) aims.

Technology must serve our interactions, not dominate them

Two divisions are especially appreciated by our MEA Wealth Management clients:

BNP Paribas Real Estate: this offers international expertise to GCC investors who wish to invest in European markets, a key strength for the Group. The team facilitates access to our international network based in 38 countries, providing property development expertize, investment management, transactions, consulting, valuation and property management services.
Najmah: this award-winning Global Islamic Banking Division stuffed full of Islamic banking specialists coordinates with a renowned Sharia Board to structure and market a broad range of Sharia compliant investments and financing solutions.

What challenges remain?

Well, Covid has obviously been a considerable challenge, and we’ve our three crucial pillars that I have already outlined over the longer-term. But on top of this I believe that preparing for the huge imminent generational transfer of wealth is important – and the differing needs of each participant. For instance, baby boomers and millennials will each have different investment behaviours, and each must be catered for as the transfer of wealth happens.

The inheriting generation will expect different services and solutions from wealth managers. Therefore, it is important that banks operating in the wealth management sector prepare adequately for this.

With the rise of technological advancement and digitalization, banks will also need to invest sufficiently in cybersecurity, which only grows in importance as the world digitalizes and shrinks. This naturally creates a more complex regulatory environment. Wealth managers must adapt to regulatory changes in all countries and regions and keep this in their minds as they operate.

Regulators are pushing for tighter control and more transparency. All the regulatory requirements involve the use of advanced technology, so banks will need to continue to invest in strong IT infrastructures.

Standard Bank believes in training its relationship managers (RMs) and future leaders to deliver the best possible service and even trains its young clients in finance, winning it Best Next-Generation Offering and Outstanding RM Training and Development Program at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021. Its efforts mean it was also awarded Outstanding Global Private Bank: Africa and was commended in three other categories (see bullet point at end).

The judging panel at the PBI Awards 2021 commented that it was “an awareness of how advancing your people is the best way to advance your business,” that won Standard Bank its trophy for Outstanding RM Training and Development, “thanks to its its digital and physical training academies, which also span to training its young clients about how best to invest their money.” This client-facing work won it the Best Next-Generation Offering trophy. “Its excellent work on intergenerational wealth preservation and transfer and data-rich technology options deservedly won it the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Africa award as well.”

The advancement of your people represents the advance of your company over the long-term. That is why Standard Bank Wealth and Investment values employee and client relationships so highly. It believes so strongly in intergenerational wealth preservation and transfer that it even financially educates its own young customers, offering them Next Generation Academies, the only wealth manager to do this in Africa, in order to help them ensure they get the most out of their good fortune. It won the Best Next-Generation Offering trophy specifically for its unique efforts delivering:

Junior Leaders Academy: events for the 10–12-year-old offspring of wealthy clients. Teaching them young about the challenges of making, investing, spending, and giving money pays dividends later in life, and aids future loyalty. Parents are of course often a central part of the event too. An example event was guest speaker Kitty Phetla, a Ballerina, addressing the young audience.

Young Leaders Academy: events for 13–17-year-olds teaches Standard Bank’s young wealthy clients about their wealth profile and how they can best navigate their future financial lives. Paul Ballen of Pauls’ Homemade Ice-cream addressed the young leaders.

Future Leaders Academy: for 18–24-year-olds deepens an understanding of how to create, manage and grow wealth. Dinesh Patel, CEO of OrderIn, addressed them.

Standard Bank also hosts Leadership Academy: Thought Leadership events for adults as well, sparking intergenerational debates and digital academies. During the Covid-19 outbreak, for instance, it hosted a webinar with John Sanei of Duke Corporate Education in Johannesburg. He talked about the effects the pandemic is likely to have on the future in South Africa and globally. Another virtual event, held during the pandemic, was the African Wealth Report Launch on 13.

12 August 2020. This shed light on the ‘Art of Creating Wealth’ in Africa and presented research findings across South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Mauritius.

The bank’s future plan to use data analytics and insights to segment its entire customer base into baby boomers, X, Y, Z and so on – and identify and cater for the needs of each – show that it is developing a whole life strategy for its client base from the cradle to the grave.

Outstanding training leads to an outstanding African PB

Standard Bank Wealth and Investment has its own internal Academy to facilitate staff training for relationship managers (RMs) and others, winning it further trophies for its development program, and ultimately its status as a successful African private bank (PB). It posted 50% growth in new clients last year. Despite Covid-19 challenges and headline earnings suffering, it still saw Assets under Management (AuM) grow 12% to R46,983m.

The internal Academy at the bank is focused on talent mapping and identifying future leaders via the NexGen Manco program, which helps junior and middle managers in their journey into senior management positions. There is a mentoring program and a Journey to Greatness initiative as well for those earmarked for the top.

For RMs starting out there is a lot of help with planning and time management support and a step-by-step guide to best practice behaviors that will improve the quality of their client engagements. A Client Discussion guide is also available covering key topics and discussion points they should be aware of in order to ensure a focused engagement with clients that is packed full of insights. In addition, there is a:

Training Bytes and Knowledge Hub: Daily or weekly bite size learning nuggets are distributed to RMs to ensure they are up to date with internal and market knowledge. They can be saved in a Knowledge Hub.

Digital learning platform: the team has access to various digital libraries and can select the skills they want to focus on, join relevant groups and follow various learning paths, with LinkedIn learning, abstracts, courses, a Harvard Online Learning portal, and many other such tools.

The Perform to Grow online journal: houses RMs development plan, key performance indicators (KPIs) and action plans to ensure they know what to do to progress.

Digitally speaking a new group-wide customer relationship management (CRM) module from Salesforce introduced last year has also been helpful in delivering a single shared view of the client. RMs can pull data from the core banking system to capture client information, identify opportunities, requests for fulfillment and manage email workflows. It has helped increase knowledge and fast client engagement.

The over-arching Challenger model that the bank introduced a few years ago to remodel how it approaches clients brings with it an assumption that insight-rich engagements are the norm, rather than a demonstration of products, as this drives deeper interactions and ultimately better sales. The Challenger concept flows throughout the bank and is evident via:

Challenger Coaching: for everyone to buy into the concept and specific leadership modules to facilitate peer-to-peer learning and help fast track the best performers.

Challenger Portal: provides access to guides, insights, messages, and industry-related topics, to ensure that RMs our engaged with the philosophy. Complex problems can be shared on the portal to crowdsource good responses and upskill everyone.

Standard Bank is confident it will continue to grow due to its focus on client and employee training and support. It is rightly proud of its low staff turnover rate of 7.3% compared to the industry average of 15%, which it thinks further helps educate its clients about how to preserve their wealth, thanks to the experience of the staff. Training them up delivers better loyalty, and ultimately better end results.

Standard Bank were also HC: Highly Commended in the Best Family Office category at the Private Banker International (PBI): Global Wealth Awards 2021, which were held virtually on 8 October, and in the Outstanding Wealth Management Technology Initiative – Front Office and – Back Office categories.

Commenting on their PBI Awards accolades, Sanah Gumede of Standard Bank Wealth & Investment, said: “We are both honoured and humbled by the various recognitions we have attained this year, which bears testament to our ability to adapt in the face of challenging conditions, and to craft holistic solutions that are relevant for our valued clients.”

Established in 1967, Mashreq Private Bank has international reach with a presence in nine countries and strong Middle Eastern representation in Egypt, Bahrain and Kuwait, alongside its core UAE market. It serves high-net worth individuals domestically and HNWIs from across the world who look to the UAE as an offshore center. Its experienced staff, expertize and product, mutual and investment fund platforms, saw it recognized as the Outstanding Private Bank: Middle East at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021.

Thanks to its corporate and investment banking arms, Mashreq Securities and the Mashreq Capital division at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), the private bank can easily structure products that cater to the individual and unique needs of its HNWI clients in the UAE or abroad – as one bank. The Private Bank (PB) has conventional and Islamic Sharia options, spanning different asset classes, instruments, and geographies to suit all clients’ needs and the constant demand for highly diversified portfolios. Approximately 50% of clients come from the UAE and the Middle East region, with the rest mainly spread across Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.

The key performance indicators (KPIs) for Mashreq PB during its last full accounts last year, were:
Assets under Management (AuM): US$3.7 billion
Private Bankers: 31
Number of Clients: 1,500
Income fees: US$50 million
Digitally active base: 78%

Prior investments in good technology has led to the impressive digital usage figure among its client base and high digital participation from employees, with numbers rising all the time.

Diversified portfolios are achieved by access to well stocked and diverse product, mutual and investment fund platforms. The latter has over 25 global partners and more than 250 regulatory approved investment fund aggregated offerings via Mashreq’s entire operation, plus customized income portfolio solutions, alongside systematic investment plan (SIP) and execution capabilities across 150,000 funds. It is all backed by Private Bank people and tools designed to tailor solutions to meet clients’ specific needs and wealth goals. The mutual funds platform gives access to a wide array of strategies and structures that meet induvial risk and return preferences.

The Private Bank offers insurance products, wealth structuring and accounts for day-to-day money access. Lending, often via property rental options or trade finance, is also a key offer from the entire organization. It can contribute towards working capital business requirements. Additionally, there is a Lombard lending platform link.

The revamped Mashreq PB Products & Solutions platform offers in-house modelling of portfolios and a diverse array of fixed maturity plans, overdrafts against properties, and alternative structured solutions.

The experience of staff, with 40% of Private Bankers having been there for decades, and strong career development plans in place for the 25% who’ve been there for between two to five years, mean that the human touch is never forgotten either. Certified relationship managers (RMs), foreign exchange (FX) and other specialists ensure a comprehensive and deep service.

The revamped Mashreq PB Products & Solutions platform offers in-house modelling of portfolios and a diverse array of fixed maturity plans, overdrafts against properties, and alternative structured solutions.

Maybank Group, a universal bank headquartered in Malaysia, set up Maybank Private to cater to the wealth management (WM) needs of high-net-worth (HNW) clients in 2014. Today, the private banking arm serves clients from its three booking centres. With a proposition to enhance clients’ wealth portfolios and capabilities to provide excellent service, Maybank stood out in its products and service standards to win the Outstanding Private Bank: Southeast Asia at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021.

The private banking arm of Maybank has achieved much in the last eight years, growing its client base significantly. Maybank Private’s assets under management (AUM) stood at US$ 17.1 billion as at end 2020. This represents a 20.4% increase compared to 2019’s AUM of US$ 14.2 billion.

Three onshore booking centers have been established in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong to serve clients across 10 ASEAN countries and Greater China, giving direct access to regional and global investment opportunities. Maybank Private has a deep and extensive presence in Malaysia and a full suite of financial solutions, including Shariah offerings, for their HNW and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) clients. Its Maybank Private London Desk also gives it global reach and acts as a strategic gateway to opportunities in the UK.

The private banking services are backed by Maybank Group’s capabilities and synergies across wealth products and solutions. A few examples are:

1. Leveraging Maybank Group’s network. This enables:

Close collaboration with units such as Global Banking and Business Banking to provide private banking solutions to business owners and C-suite executives as originally envisaged, completing the WM proposition.
A wider reach to the untapped Shariah market potential with Maybank Islamic Private Banking.
Seamless cross-border financing and a unique value proposition.
Upgrading of top clientele from Maybank Premier to Maybank Private, availing a suite of private banking solutions to clients as they move up the wealth continuum.
A regional client servicing model and mindset which increases contact, trades, consistency and client stickiness.

2. Regional client servicing mindset provides:

Potential client base from Maybank Group’s existing customers across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Greater China.
Cross-selling opportunities as a part of the organisation’s DNA.
A regional perspective to on-boarding, servicing and referring of eligible clients and creating a better client journey to meet clients’ needs effectively.

3. Seamless cross-border financing permits:
Timely and flexible cross-border investments.
Assets in home country pledged for investment opportunities found in another.

4. Leading the frontier in Islamic Private Banking and providing Shariah options with:
Maybank Islamic Bank as the largest Islamic Bank in ASEAN, and Malaysia being one of its key Islamic markets. It is also one of the top Islamic Banks globally.

Innovative Shariah-compliant products like General Investment Account (GIA-i), Islamic Dual Currency Investments, Islamic Auto-Callable Structured Products, and Islamic Legacy which are crucial to catering to clients’ specific needs.

Technology is a crucial element in the advancement of the bank. Maybank Private adopted Avaloq as its core banking system for the wealth business to enhance response time and the banking experience, while giving relationship managers a 360-degree view of each client’s total banking relationship, interest, price and risk tolerance level. The Maybank Mobile Wealth app has also enhanced flexibility, access and ease-of-use, while providing direct access to clients’ wealth management portfolios.

RBC Wealth Management (WM) won Outstanding Global Private Bank: North America at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 for its strong Canadian presence and the on-going expansion of its City National Bank (CNB) unit in the US and s private client group (PCG) wealth advisory firm – not to mention its expanding services and partnerships. A Highly Commended (HC) trophy was also given for its growth strategy.

Canada is RBC WM’s traditional ‘home’ market where it enjoys leading positions thanks to its long-established wealth planning, retirement, tax, estate & trust planning, succession, insurance, risk and other expertise, which is on offer to the mass affluent. It actively collaborates with RBC’s Personal & Commercial Banking (P&CB) arms to make new products and technologies available to this segment in an integrated and simple manner, inviting them along the value chain as individuals’ personal wealth grows.

The RBC Dominion Securities (RBC DS) full-service brokerage business and its Private Bank (PB) are also key contributors to growth, and indeed its win at the PBI Awards 2021. The latter PB arm is a market leader versus its six major competitors, with:

Revenue market share (36%)
Deposit balance market share (34%)
Loan balance market share (30%)

The RBC DS investment advisors and brokerage business offers local, global and south-facing US options, and a leading 26% market share. It has C$400 billion (US$315.1 bn) in Assets under Administration (AUA) and serves over 275,000 households.

America

In the US, the CNB unit is focused on private and commercial banking for Ultra High Net Worth and HNW clients, their businesses and families. It has contributed to RBC’s strong performance, alongside its 2,000+ PCG wealth advisors who serve 330,000 households from 170 branches across 40 states.

Over the past four years, the business has increased overall client assets from US$276 billion to US$416bn, with earnings growth from US$79 million in 2015 to US$261m in 2020, despite a tough prior year due to Covid-19 and low interest rates.

The CNB unit has a high-touch, proactive advice model, which has been buttressed by efficiency and productivity gains elsewhere and in additional digital technological capabilities. It offers a broad range of lending, deposit, cash management, international banking, equipment financing and WM services. The opening of new locations in priority markets in New York and Washington D.C. has extended its reach and deepened its specialization focus on the entertainment and political ecosystems, among other business and entrepreneur specializations.

HC: Outstanding Private Bank for Growth Strategy

The growth strategy at RBC WM, which was Highly Commended (HC) by the PBI Awards 2021, includes an RBC iShares strategic alliance between RBC Global Asset Management and BlackRock Canada. This helps investors interested in mutual funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The iShares alliance has led the industry in sales over the last 12 months and continues to be the largest ETF complex in Canada. The US growth activities, described above, also contributed considerably to RBC WM’s commendation.

More recently, the firm has expanded its suite of Sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) offerings across the entire organization. This is because it naturally spies the numerous growth opportunities available in the green agenda, and longer-term as the world moves towards meeting ambitious carbon net zero targets.

Itaú Private Bank has won the Best Bank for Sustainability and ESG Leadership – Corporate Strategy for defining and integrating Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria into its everyday business and launching an ESG product platform with 70 options, among other things. It has also been awarded the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Latin America trophy at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 for its results and approach. Itaú Private Bank (PB) has 733 dedicated specialists, a presence in seven countries and serves 8,710 Latin American (LatAm) client families. Its goal is to ensure the perpetuation of legacies and wealth for customers. It does this by focusing on services; prudent risk management; employing a great team; digitalization, which helped it during Covid-19; and its four guiding pillars:

The centrality of the client,
Sustainable partnerships,
Continuous evolution, such as its garlanded ESG work, & relationships built on trust the results are evident in its financials and performance, making it the Outstanding Global PB this year in LatAm, despite the challenges of Covid-19. Itaú Private Bank is the largest in Brazil with a market share of 28.4% during the first half of 2021. The volume of Assets under Management (AuM) reached BRL 669 billion (US$124.7 bn), double the size of the country’s number two player, and the first half of 2021 was also marked by a record capture of new assets: BRL 53.5 billion (US$9.9 bn). The prior 2020 financial results were better than expected as well, considering the pandemic, which hit Brazil hard.
There were:
BRL 39 billion (US$7.1bn) in net new assets.
5% revenue growth to BRL 2.6bn (US$473 million).
A stable net income figure (over BRL 1 billion, equivalent to US$182m).

The focus on digitalization helped ensure efficient resource management and cost-to-income ratios, as well as helping the bank deliver an effective Covid-19 response that enabled work from home practices. Digital tools served clients remotely if needed with data, online events, and services. Digitalization allowed the bank to still perform despite the challenges of the past 18 months.

Itaú Private Bank has a strong advisory model with key pillars that include:

Structured investment process: Overseen by 70 professionals across seven countries this reviews and updates the investment strategy, providing economic analysis & optimal allocation.

Wide-open platform: offers access to global products and services, curated in a one-stop-shop format.
Custom portfolio-building: for each client.

Wealth planning: access to an exclusive team of estate-planning specialists.
Environmental, Social, and Governance

ESG is a crucial part of Itaú PB’s Responsible Investments advisory pillar as well. The bank’s work ensuring that ESG considerations are fully incorporated into its business and stakeholder relations, reflecting its historical commitment to the sustainability agenda, was rewarded with its second trophy at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021.

It has defined and integrated ESG into its everyday operations via a series of Positive Impact Commitments that revised and updated its past sustainability guidelines to guide all future actions in this area. Other positive steps it has made to advance the ESG agenda – and ensure future growth for clients – include:

An ESG product platform: with 70 options across Brazilian and global markets, the platform spans asset classes ranging from corporate debt securities to sustainable bonds. It has been carefully curated exclusively for clients, and will no doubt grow as the ESG sector does.

Amazon Plan & Conference: In conjunction with two other large Brazilian financial institutions (FIs) Itaú created an Amazon Plan in June 2020 to promote sustainable development in the region, hitherto a problem. On 7-9 December it followed up by hosting an online conference with 70+ public figures, experts, companies, and players from the domestic and international financial markets. All of them gathered to debate investment opportunities, ESG practices, and the socioeconomic potential of the Amazon region.

Sustainable fund: By 2025, the over-arching retail Itaú Unibanco and general / investment banking arm has said it will contribute BRL 400 billion (US$72.8bn) to business initiatives that promote a sustainable, green, and inclusive economy.

UBS won the Outstanding Global Private Bank: Asia-Pacific category at the Private Banker.

International (PBI) Global Wealth Awards 2021, held virtually on 8 October, for a combination of its financial and growth performance, powered by past technology and people investments, and its focus on sustainable investment (SI). UBS has US$3 trillion in invested assets and a diversified global scale. But its strong franchise in Asia-Pacific (APAC) is noteworthy for its 15 wealth management offices in 10 locations, including private bankers, and its 30% profit before tax (PBT) contribution to the global wealth management (GWM) business total of US$1.1 billion last year, winning it a trophy at the PBI Awards 2021.It is estimated 70% of the increase in profits at GWM last year came from APAC alone. Profit per client advisor grew more than 110% to US$1.16 million for FY2020 as UBS benefitted from productivity and efficiency gains group-wide that kept its cost-income ratio below 50% helped largely by becoming a more technology-enabled business.

Years of investments in technology and in training staff for high performance are paying off internally – and externally for clients. For instance, the ‘My Way’ platform, launched in Q4 2020, combines digital capabilities with personal interaction. Clients’ tailor-make their discretionary portfolios on an interactive tablet screen with their client advisor. This enhances the client experience (CX) and improves engagement and results. Assets under Management (AuM) via the My Way platform have already exceeded US$2.6 billion globally. They crossed US$660 million in APAC as of Q1 2021. Other digital projects included:

Direct Investment Insights (DII) were launched on the UBS mobile banking app and e-banking website to empower investors with timely, relevant, and actionable investment insights. To prevent overload and enhance personalization clients only get insights based on their financial interests with related trading cases clearly outlined.

Digital plans were accelerated across the board at UBS and steep climbs in client engagement were witnessed. For instance, in Q4 2020 more trades were executed via e-trading versus traditional execution – over 62% of all equity trades were electronic.

UBS placed over 200 virtual events online due to the Covid-19 outbreak. More than 43,000 clients participated. Its sixth ‘Disruptive Technology CEO Summit’ was also held virtually in October 2020, still attracting more than 5,000 global investors.

UBS is also seeking to further grow its client franchise now that live events are once again permitted as pandemic restrictions ease. For instance, it put on the ‘Tech Connect South-East Asia (SEA)’ show in Singapore on 28 June 2021. This connects clients, start-ups, academics and thought leaders to facilitate know-how and capital transfer. Emerging fintech startups can expect exclusive access to a global network of clients, investors and expertise, creating win-win partnership possibilities and effectively creating a technology accelerator platform. Eventually, more entrepreneurs will hopefully flow into UBS’ private bank at the end of it and, of course, there are many investment opportunities there for existing clients.

S1: sustainable investments

UBS has a 100% fully diversified SI portfolio, which crossed a major milestone in APAC when it reached US$2.8 billion at the end of 2020. Its risen 32% in the past 12 months and reached US$3.5bn by the end of Q1 this year. In September 2020, GWM announced it has made sustainable investments the preferred solution for private clients globally, proving the bank’s commitment to the area and expectation of returns in it.

Additionally, UBS has directed US$6.9bn of client assets into impact investments related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since 2017. In many ways this can be seen as a precursor to the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda that is particularly popular at the moment as carbon net zero targets proliferate globally. SI is a key element in ESG as well, alongside the social justice aspects of this hot topic.

Last year the bank’s Core Sustainable Investments (Core SI) rose by 62% to USD$793bn overall to become 19% of all client invested assets. Core SI products involve a strict and diligent asset selection process across key SI strategies, maintains the bank. Invested assets classified as impact investing or sustainability focused – applying only the most rigid sustainability criteria – increased 154% in comparison to 2019, to stand at US$141bn. UBS’ strategic focus on sustainable asset classes and the increased demand for SI is clear.

Crossinvest (Asia), a privately owned wealth manager, had a change in ownership last year and incoming CEO and chairman, Cem Azak, has already had an impact making him one of the Rising Stars for Asia- Pacific recognized at the PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021, held virtually on 8 October.

Crossinvest (Asia) believes that the change in ownership enacted last year will offer it more resources to improve its private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) units and will support the development of its family office services.

New CEO, Cem Azak, has a network of ultra high-net worth (UHNW) individuals and families in London, Frankfurt, New York, Zurich, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore, that will help it overhaul its family office. Azak believes he can offer the firm better access to investment products via his network built up over many years in the industry.

Azak was formerly EFG Bank’s managing director & head of international markets, and part of their private banking (PB) council as well during his five years at EFG in senior management, before taking the reins at Crossinvest Asia in 2020. He had previously worked at DBS in Singapore as Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) head, and spent a decade at Barclays before that.

Set up in Switzerland in 1985, Crossinvest secured a fund management license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in 2005 entering the region as a founding member of the Association of Independent Asset Managers Singapore.

Speaking to Private Banker International (PBI) at the start of his tenure, Azak said: “While we will continue to focus on investing across the global financial markets providing access to multi-asset class solutions, Crossinvest (Asia) will also be offering more PE and VC opportunities for our clients in future.”

“This could include financing solutions and investment opportunities for clients’ companies as well,” continued Azak. “I like to call it ‘private investment banking’. We aim to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for our clients where they can receive comprehensive advice and integrated solutions to meet all their needs – from investment to business financing needs, from wealth to legacy planning.”

Additionally, Azak said to PBI that Crossinvest will also commit to digitized wealth management services and sustainable investing, reflecting the trends evident in the industry.

Another key industry trend is the rise of family offices in Asia-Pacific, hence the acquisition of a majority shareholding in Crossinvest Asia as an existing multi-family office player, with a strong investment management team and track record. The rise of family offices in A-P apes what happened earlier in Europe and the US when wealth flows from first generation creators to builders and inheritors in the second and third generation, necessitated a plethora of new services. Family assets increasingly need to be structured and allocated via trusts or put in alternative investments that can bring higher returns, and so on. A fiduciary advisor must act with a higher standard of care to his clients than a mere financial advisor and this is increasingly what family office clients demand in A-P – and have a right to expect.

Professionalization of the sector has advanced rapidly as wealth in the region has advanced.

Another driver for the acquisition was that at a multi-family office the incentive structure is built to align with the clients’, removing any possible conflict of interest between the advisor and clients. This is attractive to Azak as he believes merging asset management and private wealth services for clients is a better way to navigate financial markets and removes the conflicting interests and barriers that can sometimes impede banker / client relationships. The longer timeframe prioritized in wealth transfer and legacy planning can be particularly helpful in this regard.

The new CEO has already helped the company close its largest PE funding deal with one of Singapore’s most innovative artificial intelligence (AI) firms to finance its ambitions. The extra investment will help it enhance the asset management service and increase Crossinvest Asia’s capabilities.

In this Q&A interview with Sanah Gumede, Head of Wealth and Investment SA, Standard Bank, the South African talks about her high-net worth client responsibilities, her travels around the world, getting educated, family, her ambition to improve generational wealth transfer, and how technology is changing the business

Please briefly describe your ambitions and leadership style?

I would like to make an impact on generational wealth. Research tells us that 70% of generational wealth gets depleted by the second generation and 90% by the third. I want to stop that leakage.

My ambition is to partner with our clients to roll out initiatives that guide the next generation about money and equip them with the necessary tools to manage and grow their wealth with a clear long-term strategy to benefit future generations.

In terms of leadership, my philosophy is to focus on results and strive to leave the business, clients, and team in a better position than before. Personally, I like to create an environment that promotes ideation, where the team is empowered to generate and execute on new ideas, as I believe that is the best way to get results. The key skills required for any leadership role are always similar, with different emphases depending on the position and time. But you must always:

Deliver results
Have a strategy and communicate your vision. Encourage ideas.
Be authentic and empathic.
Learn your business and people, so you can be a subject matter expert, but know when to delegate to others’ strengths.
Have the required technical skills.

Tell us about your career, personal & professional life in terms of your upbringing, education and experiences – and how it’s impacted your approach to business?

My ideas about leadership were formed professionally by my further education experiences. I obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa and completed the Finance Executive Development Program with GIBS and London Business School in 2010.

A turning point came in 2013-14 when I completed the Global Executive MBA at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France. My elective studies included Strategy, Structure & Incentives; Managing Multicultural and Virtual Teams; Psychology of Leadership; Corporate Governance; Making the Leadership Transition; and Entrepreneurial Leadership. This experience formed my leadership style.

Education is vital, but it comes in many different forms. Simply travelling abroad and being open to different cultures and ideas has its own virtue and benefit. I love to explore the world with my husband and kids, and friends, to see what’s out there. Being curious leads to idea creation itself. I’ve travelled to Kenya, Swaziland, Lesotho, London, Jersey, New York, Washington DC, Singapore, Bali, Bulgaria, Dubai, Munich and Shanghai, among many other places. However, my all-time happy place is still the South African bush with great views of the wildlife. My upbringing was in a village called Ramogodi in Ga- Rankuwa, Pretoria. I was raised by a phenomenal woman who taught me about love, empathy, caring, kindness, and generosity. My upbringing drove me to work hard and make a meaningful impact in others’ lives, hence my natural passion for leading teams and managing value-add client relationships.

Tell us about your professional background then?

I started out at Investec Private Banking where I began in an administrative role and worked my way up to being a Private Banker and then a Team Leader. We looked after clients who were predominantly Trainee and Chartered Accountants (managers and partners) working at the big four audit firms. The strategy was to increase Investec’s market share in the accounting space, increase the product footprint through crossselling, and enhance Investec’s brand presence within the audit firms and associated professional bodies. I spent 9 years there before departing to be Regional Manager for Private Banking at Barclays Africa Group Limited (Oct 2014 – May 2016) and then Head of Client Value Proposition at Absa Wealth and Investment (June 2016 – Sep 2017).

I joined Standard Bank in September 2017 as the Head of Wealth Management for Johannesburg, before moving internally to be Head of Client Coverage for Standard Bank’s Wealth and Investment SA business, and then becoming Head of High Net Worth (HNW) at Standard Bank South Africa.

I am presently Head of Wealth and Investment SA at the bank, responsible for a team of relationship managers (RMs), specialized lenders, fiduciary experts and wealth managers. My key focus areas are to deliver greater value to the HNW individuals and to ultra HNWIs. My aim is to elevate the client experience (CX), employee engagement and enhance processes, growth strategies and the sales experience, thereby delivering profitability. Managing risk and compliance are always a part of the job too.

(i) How has the industry changed over your career?
(ii) What are you doing to prepare your company’s plans to align with it?

(i) The biggest change I have witnessed over my career has been how client needs have evolved and become more complex. We have had to shift from just being a product provider to being more engaging with clients to better understand their needs and then offer them solutions to meet their unique needs.

With the increase in technology, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, we have also had to think more about digital channels and shift the way we engage with our clients. Our use of technology and innovation to create various communication channels has been a significant change, as has been a post-pandemic renewed focus on getting the work / life balance correct and ensuring savings and wealth transfer plans are properly in place.

The competitive landscape we operate in has seen a significant change with the emergence of fintech enabled challenger banks, who bring with them a variety of value propositions as they attempt to carve out market share and service historically underserved segments, typically in the mass affluent self-serve segment. We’re responding appropriately. HNWIs want these capabilities too, as well as the ability to speak to Relationship Managers.

Our journey to being ‘future ready’ has challenged us to rethink our approach to serving our clients’ needs. We understand that today’s market is more complex than ever before, and clients are empowered with more information. We are therefore moving from a product based approach to an insight-led approach. Digital innovation helps us deliver it.

We want to be a platform business that works with partners to deliver effective digital services in an ecosystem full of easily accessible options. The aim is to be an organization that understands each client personally and offers them far more than just financial products. In other words, we need to go beyond banking and focus on delivering proactive and insight led engagements that lead to sales and deepening relationships.

Obviously, we want to be the partner of choice for HNWIs and that means having good products and expert staff as well. We give our clients investments that are aligned to their short, medium and long-term objectives, and which are robust enough to withstand market turmoil. Over the longer-term this is achieved by a carefully crafted allocation of global assets, designed to augment one another through inverse correlation. Assets behave differently to market stimuli, which is what enables us to provide clients with consistent returns over the longer term. Despite short-term volatility, from Covid-19 or whatever source, our portfolios deliver superior risk-adjusted returns.

Our vision is to be the leading HNWI Wealth business for Sub-Saharan clients and those interested in Africa. Aligning the people, process and technology in this fashion, and prioritizing the platformization and personalization of our business – while retaining face-to-face capabilities for U-HNWIs and investment expertise in our staff – is what will deliver success.

Our vision is to establish the leading HNWI wealth business for Sub-Saharan clients and those interested in Africa through alignment of people, process, and technology, and by prioritizing the platformization and personalization of our business while retaining face-to-face capabilities for UHNWI and in-house investment expertise. This is what we believe will drive success.

Bank of Krungsri Ayudhya, commonly referred to as simply Krungsri in Thailand, has won the Most Effective Investment Service Offering category at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 for its retail customer focused Smart Advisor tool. This is designed for use on complicated mutual funds, and other investments, via the Krungsri Mobile application (KMA).

The idea of the tool is to personalize suggestions on investments under acceptable risk conditions for retail customers. Smart Advisor is a one-stop service mobile banking application, on the KMA platform, which provides a full range of investment services, spanning:
Advisory,
Asset allocation,
Transactions,
& Tracking, with instant notifications and data update capabilities. For instance, it is vital to respond quickly to market movements if the profile of a portfolio changes. Instant alerts are used to make clients aware when this happens and advise them on what to do to remain on target and in good shape.

Smart Advisor can compare existing portfolios against recommendations from the tool itself. For instance, a section displays a past performance benchmark v each investment strategy allowing the customer to better understand the characteristic return in that option. By understanding the risk better investors can re-balance and manage port more efficiently, so assets are allocated with purpose. For example, the model might suggest a single mutual fund or advise against it, depending on what the customer goal is: do they want to save tax, pursue high risky yields, or be more steady? Options are presented in a risk assessed manner.

Smart Advisor uses artificial (AI) and human intelligence disseminated via the channel, both out and in, to turn investing into a simple, secure task for the everyday customer. Key features include:

1. Online risk assessment: this is defined as the “probability of occurrence of losses relative to the expected return of a customer on any investment” (see above). An in-built algorithm runs this check to classify the type of investor from both human and AI data sources to help the customer (and bank) mitigate risk appropriately.
2. Investment advisory: Krungsri built Smart Advisor as a trusted financial advisor to make sure that clients understand the way to invest in mutual funds and other financial products. We only ever recommend investment v the customer type and provide as much detail as possible to inform choice.
3. Wealth path: this function is the module that uses AI to forecast investment returns to help customers better understand the likelihood of each possible outcome. It helps users make responsible cognizant decisions about the level of risk, how long they might want to invest, and so on.
4. Transactions: To be a one-stop service the bank has a function to track and submit funds recommended by Smart Advisor, after they’ve been through the advisory and risk processes previously described. This negates the need to visit a branch and get human advice and compliance.

Bank of Krungsri Ayudhya continues to expand the capabilities and scope of its Smart Advisor module on the KMA app. For instance, in October 2020, it collaborated with BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers, to expand into being more of an international advisory service that combines the local Thai and Asian regional expertise of Krungsri with BlackRock’s global expertise and asset advice.

The success of the project is evident by the 80% uptick in subscriptions from Q1 this year vs Q1 last year. The number of accounts being opened via the mobile channel are also rising rapidly.

In this Q&A interview with Felipe Nabuco, Director of Itaú Private Bank Brazil, the music lover talks about his career, and his firm’s expansion and technology plans, plus their response to the Covid-19 outbreak, which has hit Brazil hard.

Please briefly describe your personal & professional background?

I am married with three girls aged 7, 4 and 1. I love visiting the family farm in the south of Brazil, soccer and listening to music. I studied at Law University (Candido Mendes) in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s, while at the same time interning at Icatu, a Family Office that became a very successful investment bank in Brazil. I later joined them and had my first contact with the commercial arena, becoming a trainee and later a private banker.

In 2000, I accepted a position as a private banker at Banco BBA Creditanstalt, which would later be sold to Itaú in 2003. Since then, I’ve always been with Itaú Private Bank (PB). In 2011, I introduced a Family Office to Itaú that focuses on consulting services for large wealthy families. In its first seven years, this new segment went from four families served and two billion Brazilian Real (BRL, equivalent to US$372 million) of assets under service (AuS) to 28 families and BRL 28bn (US$5.2bn) of assets.

In 2019 I became responsible for the ultra high-net worth individuals (UHNWI) segment, which is dedicated to serving clients with assets exceeding BRL 50 million (US$9.3m). I was now coordinating a team of 16 private bankers and 16 commercial assistants and overseeing BRL 159.7 billion (US$29bn) in assets under management (AuM).

In 2021, I took over the commercial area of Itaú Private Bank, coordinating eight commercial heads and 110 bankers. I also became Director of Itaú Private Bank Brazil overall, additionally spanning the Family Office, credit and customer experience (CX) responsibilities.

What are your plans for the future?

My focus is on delivering the fundamentals of ensuring: proximity to customers; building strong relationships; and anticipating opportunities that deliver results. As I see it, there are a number of sector-wide challenges going forward, such as:
More demanding customers that want self-serve and integrated technology capabilities.
More competition for clients and talent. Staff become harder to recruit and retain as competition intensifies.
Thinner margins and more regulation, add to costs.
More concern with social issues in product selection and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) growth, as climate change climbs up the agenda.

These challenges are opportunities as well of course. For instance, ESG products may generate significant returns as carbon zero policies are introduced worldwide, and we need to be aware of this at Itaú Private Bank Brazil.

The new Ion Itaú investment app is also an exciting new technology tool that will strengthen, add and deepen our client relationships. It meets customers’ desire for selfserve technological aids. Using Ion Itaú, customers can follow market news, view their investment and profitability history, and even invest in variable income assets, as if they were at a home brokerage. To increase CX convenience, the app also consolidates information from multiple accounts and brokers, not just Itaú PB accounts. This means clients can keep track of all their investments in one place. More features are being added all the time as we ramp up our technology offering in response to client demand.

Despite our 28.4% leading market share as the biggest PB in Brazil, I believe we still have room for growth domestically in certain regions, such as:

the interior of the state of São Paulo;
& the South, Midwest and Northeast regions of Brazil.
Industry numbers and our analyses of potential customers indicate that there are a lot of opportunities in these domestic regions, particularly in regard to sophisticated products like credit instruments.

On-going expansion of our international business is also a key strategic plan via Miami, Switzerland and Portugal in particular. The focus is on our global offer to Brazilian and other Latin American customers, providing them with the services they need as global ‘citizens of the world’. We’ve invested significantly in our international platform as well both in terms of the physical infrastructure linkages and offices, plus the technology platform needed to power international growth.

Covid-19 has hit economies & workers around the world: How’s it impacted your company & business? How have you responded?

In 2020, we reaffirmed our commitment to society as a whole and to Brazilians by creating Todos pela Saúde (All for Health), an alliance of professionals working to fight the coronavirus in Brazil, with a historic donation of more than BRL 1.2 billion (US$223 million).

For our employees, we’ve implemented a broad set of support measures for these trying times. A few examples include:

1. Work from home (WFH): 100% of our employees are home-office-enabled. Financial assistance has been provided.
2. Protect & clean: We’ve implemented protection face equipment, cleaning and other such security measures at all our offices.
3. Medical: Our employees have access to virtual medical care via online appointments with a multidisciplinary team that is accessible 24×7 by telephone, WhatsApp, or our Medical Care app – all free-of-charge.
4. Emotional support: is available via specialists that will listen to our employees and help them weather this period of social isolation and quarantine.

We are looking after clients too of course. Our team adapted very quickly to the new ways of working, just as customers have adapted to remote services, and digital means of remaining in touch. A service model that prioritizes virtual meetings, personalized communications and informative content via social media events and podcasts has been implemented.

As vaccination progresses and economies rebound, we remain optimistic about the onshore market and offshore opportunities.

Briefly provide an overview of your company’s status, financially and in the marketplace?

A4. Itaú Private Bank is the largest PB in Brazil. We ended the first half of 2021 with a market share of 28.4%. Our volume of assets under management has reached BRL 669 billion (US$124.7 bn), double the amount of the number two player.

Revenue has grown by more than 12% annually over the last five years, which demonstrates the resilience of our business, despite recent challenges, which paradoxically have also seen a spike in savings and asset focus. The first half of 2021 was marked by a record capture of new assets: BRL 53.5 billion (US$9.9 bn).

Anything you want to add or stress?

At Itaú Private Bank our goal is to ensure the perpetuation of the legacies and wealth of our customers across generations. Proximity to our customers – and putting their interests at the center of our decisions – are the fundamental elements of our working method. Anticipating customer needs and offering personalized and appropriate services to every one of them are also intrinsic to this approach.

At the same time, we are the ultimate one-stop shop, delivering Itaú’s complete offer with the sophistication of the best private bank in Brazil. Happily, our results are showing us that we are on the right track.

GOOD SERVICES & PEOPLE CENTRAL TO A FAMILY WIN

Centrum Wealth Ltd (CWL) was set up in India over a decade ago to offer distribution and investment advisory services across asset classes to wealthy clients with over US$1 million, spanning equity, fixed income, alternate and overseas investments, and real estate. Its ever-expanding and growing business won Best Family Office at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021.

CWL pursues an open architecture approach, so clients are not locked into products and enjoy access to the entire market. Its offer is powered by an experienced team of experts fluent in international investment options and taxation advice, through to succession planning and structuring, and a modern technology platform that executes their wishes easily and keeps clients fully updated.

The wealth manager also caters to select ultra high-net worth individual (UHNWI) families in recent times. It on-boarded 25 last year to take its cohort to over 100 since the establishment of the family office four years ago. Assets under Management (AuM) for the family office now stand at US$1 billion and new services, such as legal and philanthropy assistance, are being added all the time.

New initiatives include investment in an enhanced website, a new communication infrastructure and education for its 112 relationship managers (RMs) to increase personalization and technology capabilities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Clients and RMs can now:

Access investment data on demand.
Complete tasks effectively, efficiently, and intuitively.
Access the best of the digital and physical worlds, via what the bank terms its new ‘phy-gital’ client servicing model.
An iConnect collaborative platform has been built that allows teams to exchange information more easily via:
One Paper Lane: this equates to paperless onboarding of clients as digitalization across the bank increases.
360-Degree View: As digitalization increases RMs and clients get greater, easier access to portfolios in their entirety at speed.

CWL is focused on ‘next gen’ successors and their differing needs and interest in the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) agenda. It has noticed, and acted upon, its teams’ numerous observations that youngsters are not inclined to take on the reins of traditional family businesses anymore. The ability to interrogate data and digitally interact is also a desire for ‘next gens’ so the bank’s investment in digitalization will pay off in this respect, as will its identification of what the future generation wants, thereby safeguarding its future.

GOOD COVERAGE WINS NRI TROPHY & ME COMMENDATION

Emirates NBD’s (ENBD) Global South Asian Business (GSAB) comprises 14 relationship managers (RMs) and three investment advisors working on a dual coverage model in the UAE and globally via private baking (PB) offshore centers. It extends to East Africa, with two further team members, making it the biggest team in the middle-eastern (ME) region. GSAB, also known as Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in the industry, represent 30% of the PB client base. It’s obvious why ENBD won the Outstanding NRI/ Global Indians Offering at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 with their good coverage, backed up by a HC: Highly Commended trophy for Outstanding Private Bank: Middle East.

ENBD PB has a highly qualified Chief Investment Office (CIO) team, which combines asset allocation, single asset class strategy, and selection of recommended securities, as well as open-architecture funds and a structured products platform. They help middle-eastern clients and NRIs based there. The CIO allocation framework was redesigned a couple of years ago to include state-of- the-art risk models that better analyze backdrop, valuation, and behavioral finance. Three profiles have been developed to preserve capital over respectively 3, 5, and 7 years, while providing the best risk-adjusted return over this horizon. Last year’s return for these timeframes was respectively +11.1%, +12.2% and +13.5% despite the ongoing Covid-19 situation. Indeed, the Tactical Asset Allocation Committee significantly cut equities in February 2020 only to buy them back at a 25% lower price towards the end of March after the initial pandemic crash, proving the team knows how to maximize value. Other bank-wide Covid-19 responses included:

Enhanced digitalization: and remote client service.

Virtual events: investment seminars, digital podcasts & regular e-publications were introduced in 2020 to provide support and market guidance to Private Banking and GSAB customers during Covid-19, and indeed beyond.

Work from home (WFH): policies and IT support. RMs used Skype and other digital platforms to stay in touch. Appropriate training is always given to ensure soft service-oriented development, alongside technical market knowledge support. This is reflected in ENBD’s average Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 59 in 2020 for the GSAB team, which is considered an excellent result in the customer satisfaction and ‘likely to recommend’ measurement.

ENBD overall got NPS 55 last year, helping it obtain its middle-eastern commendation, alongside its globe-spanning services and strong regional presence.

In regard to products, the Emirates Signature Funds of Funds was unveiled last year. The three multi-asset funds based on the global asset allocation process and fund selection capabilities of the CIO team – allied to the long-term profiles mentioned previously – mean investors get a choice of cost-effective and market leading products with global exposure and appropriate robustness. By September 2020, the funds had already gathered more than US$250 million in assets and delivered returns.

Trust and Wealth Structuring needs, aided by a team in Jersey, UK, offer a number of services, including:
succession planning,
trusts,
& liquidity planning, to ensure the next generation is equipped to manage their personal wealth.

The South Asian demographic is the largest expatriate population in the UAE, representing 60% of the total. They are served by PB offices in:
Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE;
Saudi Arabian branches in Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar;
Mumbai, India office;
& offices in Singapore, and in the UK via London and the aforementioned Jersey for trusts.

Execution Desks at the Dubai headquarters and in Singapore provide access to listed capital markets and over-the-counter (OTC) instruments globally. Singapore also facilitates the rollout of new investment products and provides the GSAB unit with a booking center for jumbo life insurance policies, premium financing & structured products. Additionally, Singapore is used primarily for geographical diversification of our Asian markets offering; and as part of the bank’s strategy to deepen its coverage in South Asia. The branch in Mumbai, India, helps this as well. It also offers customers India-based products across high yielding deposits and transfers for those wanting to return home.

Looking to the future, the RM and advisory teams at the wider bank have been trained by Candriam Academy for sustainable and responsible investing, which is an increasing focus moving forward. ENBD is further formalizing its approach to this evolving sustainable and green arena as the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) agenda grows in importance.

COMMENDED FOR ITS INVESTMENTIN PEOPLE & TECH

Lombard International Group was Highly Commended in the Most Effective Investment Service Offering category at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 for its investment in its employees’ skills, knowledge, and the technology that supports their partners, clients and colleagues.

Lombard International Group provides tailored insurance based wealth, estate and succession planning solutions across multiple jurisdictions and asset classes, focusing on affluent, ultra and high-net worth individuals, their families and institutions. It has 500+ experienced wealth structuring specialists, subject-matter and technical experts globally, serving over 20 markets across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US. 40 different nationalities speak over 30 different languages, providing a deep understanding of regional cultural nuances, needs, and requirements.

Market knowledge and expertise is supported by technology, trend spotting and online transactional capabilities. The Group’s strategy is focused on digital transformation, underpinned by operational and service excellence. Under this framework, it continues to further invest in technology, enhancing its global connectivity, strengthening its geographic footprint, whilst also investing in inhouse talent and market expertise.

This is why Lombard International Group’s Investment Service Offering was recognized at the 31st annual staging of the PBI Global Wealth Awards, held on 8 October, virtually this year. And it’s not just the Private Banker International judges who were impressed. According to an industry survey of c.700 wealth professionals across 12 European countries, carried out by Lombard International Assurance, in association with Accenture Luxembourg, the company was found to be the preferred provider in Europe by almost half of the respondents.

The survey – see https://www.wealthassurancereport. com/ – was carried out between 15th September and 31st October 2020. As well as identifying Lombard International Assurance as a European leader among the majority of wealth advisers questioned across Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Germany, alongside seven other European countries, the other key finding from the report was that 75% of wealth professionals across Europe, predict the level of digitalisation over the next three years will be either “high” or “very high”.

Lombard International Group is well placed to meet this expectation with its significant investment in technology and its focus on combining the best elements of a digital infrastructure with human expertise. It is this combination that will provide the level of service that clients expect, and indeed why Lombard International Group has been highly commended.

PROTECTING & ENHANCING THE FAMILY EFFECTIVELY

Taurus Wealth is a multi-family office with 300+ clients from Asia, Europe, Middle-east & Africa offering tailored advice via its advisory model that is bank and product agnostic. Clients pay a fee. The group had US$3bn in Assets under Advice (AuA) and management last year and a number of initiatives presage further growth, getting a Highly Commended (HC) nod from the judges at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 for Best Family Office. It also got a commendation for Most Effective Investment Service Offering.

The initiatives that bode well for Taurus Wealth’s future growth are a hiring spree, particularly in the Dubai office, with an extra 25 financial advisors, investments specialists and support staff added to the payroll this past year.

Greater client coverage across more than 20 countries is now possible, with the Singapore and Zurich offices also crucial elements in its growth plan. Taurus Wealth AG was incorporated in Zurich only last year after a strategic partnership that enhanced Taurus’ booking footprint. The Singapore office is long established and has US$2bn in AuA managed by 13 advisors and four multiclass investment specialists, plus 15 support staff.

Other strategic initiatives that Taurus launched last year include:

Private equity deal desk: Established in 2020, this unit focusses on partner management, networking, due-diligence and origination of deals in the Private Equity (PE) space. It has already sourced over 15 deals for clients.

Expanded digital capability: In 2020, Taurus partnered with a fintech to launch a white-labelled offering of three distinct and digitally managed strategies giving clients a cost-efficient digital investment option. It was also the first authorized Member Participant for BondbloX (from BondeValue), which is an innovative blockchain-based Bond Exchange that allows for transparent trading and holding of conventional Bonds in fractional modes (units of $1,000 each).

Enhanced Fund Management regime: Taurus adapted the Variable Capital Company (VCC) regime launched in Singapore last year. This means its in-house niche strategies and feeder strategies for preferred third-party funds can be transitioned to the new VCC structure. This provides easy, cost-effective access to various nice strategies to enhance portfolio performance, helping it achieve its second commendation for an effective offering, among other things.

In 2021, it launched four funds via the VCC structure to give clients the ability to decide if they want to join growing investment trends supporting social impact causes and the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) agenda.

For clients Taurus cautioned on the impact of Covid-19 on the markets as early as the end of January 2020 and proactively de-risked client portfolios well ahead of the market correction in March 2020 to reduce leverage and the threat of margin calls. Other client-centric investment positives included:

Taurus Managed/Advised Strategies delivered returns of between 7% to 50%. Cautious participation in Covid-19 market rebounds last year ultimately delivered highly positive returns over the course of the year.
Third party alternative funds that are actively monitored by Taurus delivered in a generally neutral market. The best performing returned +34.7% in 2020.

The new initiatives described above, and continuity in business processes despite the pandemic, ensured that client sign-ups rose last year with 32 newcomer families in 2020, two-and-a-half times the previous year’s figure.

Outstanding Private Bank for Growth Strategy

China Merchants Bank (CMB) won Outstanding Private Bank for Growth Strategy at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021 because of its 24.36% AuM growth rate last year, helped by strategic advances involving (i) diversified services, advice & products; (ii) online & remote servicing in response to Covid-19; (iii) digital operations and marketing; (iv) events.

CMB Private Bank (PB) was established in August 2007 for high-end clients with assets of over RMB 10 million (US$1.55 million) beyond the lower level wealth management parameters. The PB is growing fast, as indeed China has been during its lifespan, benefitting from its presence in the expanding country, but also its awareness and future strategy to follow clients’ international expansions and their footprints. As Chinese firms operations have gone increasingly global over the past 14 years, so have the bank’s. For example, as initial public offerings (IPOs) by Chinese companies on foreign stock markets grow a whole group of entrepreneurs is being turned into potential PB clients. Targeting and catering for them delivers growth.

The PB is also successfully converting corporate finance clients that wanted loan help from the commercial bank and successful entrepreneurs on its own books into private banking clients latterly as they age, advance and require advisory help turning business success into a legacy. This creates a clear value chain and pathway across its organizational operations.

The bank’s effective strategy is illustrated by the fact that:
High net-worth individual (HNWI) clients rose last year by 22.41% to 99,977, a three-year high that extends its lead over domestic rivals.
The average per capita Assets under Management (AuM) figure for clients was RMB 27.75 million ($4.3m) each.
AUM grew 24.36% in 2020, or RMB 543.6 billion ($84.95 billion) from the year before even amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which paradoxically perhaps lead to a surge in savings and/or wealth planning for the affluent. Despite the challenging environment people wanted to sort out their legacies, release or store capital depending on their needs, and generally rejig their finances.

The key strategic decisions to follow and cater for Chinese wealth as it internationalizes and create a pathway from the commercial into the private bank for entrepreneurs, have been backed up specific growth initiatives, such as:

Diversified services, advice & products: Over its lifetime, CMB PB has established a service system with professional investment consultant teams as its core advantage. It has improved product services and overall assets management capabilities, including market research, investment strategies, block asset allocation, product portfolio selection, and performance tracking and surveillance. Qualified private bankers together with the investment consultant team provide a set of exclusive high-end wealth management plans for clients, including giving advice on funds, shares, bonds, foreign exchange (FX), insurance, and other varieties of portfolio. Moreover, they can also provide professional suggestions in terms of law, tax, corporate finance, investment banking, and advisory services in the fields of private equity, real estate investment, art collection etc. The unit now spans the full gamut of private banking.

Online & remote servicing: As Covid-19 forced businesses and clients to change how they interact, CMB PB accelerated its digitalization. One example is its Private Banking Exclusive Zone (PBEZ), which is based on China Merchants Bank’s app that has 80 billion monthly active use instances (MAU). PB clients with their modified version can now easily reach necessary reporting, advice and other such online PB services on the special platform.

Digital operations and marketing: online campaigns, such as the ‘Exclusive Upgraded’ one attracted over 100,000 participants and 12,000 of them have been converted into qualified PB clients by increasing the financial assets in their CMB accounts. All they needed was some encouragement, and it didn’t have to be face-to-face, which was hard during Covid-19. The online and remote servicing capabilities described above were enough to ensure business operations could continue as ‘normal’ in a digitalized manner. Marketing and growth strategies were no different.

Events: Investment strategy seminars have been held by CMB and other investor education events for well over a decade. The aim is always to help clients grasp trends in the global market and understand how best to invest. Branding, new sign-ups, extra allocations and other such benefits all accrue, even if sometimes the events have had to held online recently due to Covid-19. Digitalization makes this possible.

NOTHING ARTIFICIAL ABOUT THE BENEFITS GAINED BY USING AI

To enhance and personalize customer journeys Taishin International Bank is using artificial intelligence (AI) Deep Learning, winning it the Outstanding Wealth Management Technology Initiative – Back Office trophy at the virtual PBI Global Wealth Awards 2021. The bank was also Highly Commended in the Outstanding Wealth Management Service for the Affluent category. The customer wealth management (WM) offering at Taishin uses AI algorithms, such a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM), and AutoEncoder to personalize optimal asset allocation. The system then moved on to managing the relationship with customers through accurate prediction and analysis of behaviors. The AI solution has two key benefits:

Enhanced customer experience (CX): delighting customers with personalized information and updates helps win and retain clients.

Sales efficiency: better targeting and personalization leads to better results.

Taishin initially used LSTM, supplemented by an attention mechanism, to construct a personalized asset allocation module in the customer WM system. Its next goal was omni-directional customer management and to build a customer relationship management (CRM) module, which it began early this year. Through accurate customer segmentation and forecasting activity, the bank can now truly understand customers’ needs and keep them happy to everyone’s mutual benefit.

A usage example might include analyzing a customer’s past data and then using the AI to quickly calculate their risk preference, saving them having to answer a series of questions. It then feeds that information into managers or digital channels to provide optimal asset allocation recommendations. Frequent, deeper and more productive reviews about the health of asset allocations are also now much easier to perform, deepening the relationship.

Technology

The use of AI powered bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) ensures a two-way time series is reliably learned by the machine at Taishin, but the bank also uses the LGBM framework and AutoEncoder algorithm, which is often used in image recognition, to retain the most prominent features in customer images. This helped construct the CRM module in the second phase of the project.

LGBM: was developed by Microsoft. It is a framework that implements the GBDT algorithm and supports high-efficiency parallel training. Compared with the tech famous XGBoost algorithm, LGBM has some advantages, such as faster calculation speeds and it uses less memory.

AutoEncoder: is a model that automatically learns the features in data through a neural network to achieve specific tech functions, such as Dimension Reduction, Data Denoising, and so on.

The two technologies are used to predict the time point of customer demand and the degree of customer activity in the next month, allocating resources, data and campaigns accordingly. Real-time warnings are given about the threat of customer churn, based on past learnings, so action can be taken to prevent customer loss. A feedback loop continuously improves CX and customer ‘stickiness’. The fact Taishin has the highest number of digital customers in Taiwan and therefore the richest customer behavior data and transaction set of information helps ‘feed’ the AI. The bank also collects a large amount of internal and external data, including external behavior tags, public information, and so on to construct its comprehensive customer database, which is of course plugged into the AI to power its forecasting, accuracy and operation.

It has been rolled out across all corners of the WM unit. An immediate benefit was the system brought in NT$85 million (US$3m) in revenue to Taishin throughout 2020 and, of course, since the CRM module was introduced this year these figures are going up all the time. Efficiency and automation capabilities have also improved.

Future plans include a more formalized and powerful product recommendation engine. It will build on its existing use of Factorization Machine and the Transformer algorithm to examine customers’ click behavior on mobile banking to refine the bank’s offering to align with best-in-practice systems such as YouTube’s video recommendation engine. Development work here should increase accuracy, targeting and results.

An expansion of data sources and new variables, such as text mining on corporate announcement documents, automated examination of financial news reports, community articles on social media and other unstructured data sources, plus stock data from domestic and foreign exchanges will further optimize investment portfolio risk identification and dissemination. Feeding the AI delivers better results.

Outstanding WM service

Taishin was also Highly Commended in the Outstanding Wealth Management Service for the Affluent category at the PBI Awards 2021 for its overall offering, its diverse investment options, and its use of ‘big data’ powered analytics to tailor make products for clients based on their existing behaviors. The AI application is just a further amplification of what was already a pre-existing strength of the company.

The loyalty program of the bank was particularly noteworthy as well. It spans all sections of the bank, including an elite customer program that offers US$2,700 worth of membership privileges via premium card rights, banking and foreign exchange (FX) transaction reductions, and exclusive offerings such as the chance to attend music, fashion or art events and meet performers. The Emerald member service also offers high-net worth (HNW) customers access to private banking services, Michelin starred restaurants, and so on.

For the mass market, and to feed the WM affluent value chain described above, there was also a revamped Loyalty Program 2.0 for the general bank last year to earn Taishin Points, which could be earned via debit card usage, mobile or online banking activities, bill pay, loan or other such activities. Points could be redeemed, at a rate of 1 point being equal to NT$1, for travel, hotel, coffee or shopping vouchers. Point could also be turned into cash, which was no doubt useful during the Covid-19 pandemic.