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:
- Work from home (WFH): 100% of our employees are home-office-enabled. Financial assistance has been provided.
- Protect & clean: We’ve implemented protection face equipment, cleaning and other such security measures at all our offices.
- 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.
- 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.