Retail News CRM

Tag: wealth

  • UBS Revamps Wealth Management

    UBS Revamps Wealth Management

    UBS is restructuring its private bank, the first major move under new co-head Iqbal Khan. The move dramatically reduces the influence of two veterans of the bank.

    The Zurich-based wealth manager is making a host of changes three months into the tenure of Iqbal Khan, who joined from Credit Suisse, as co-head of its private bank.

    The biggest changes? Breaking up its European, Middle East, and African business, which dramatically curbs the purview of current head Christine Novakovic, into three parts. She is left with the EU piece including a Frankfurt hub for Europe, while Caroline Kuhnert takes on Central and Eastern Europe. Ali Janoudi will run UBS’ business in the Middle East and Africa.

    UBS is also combining a specialty unit that tailors products for the ultra-wealthy, led by veteran Christian Wiesendanger, with a markets team within its investment bank. Wiesendanger, who took over sole leadership of the unit just over one year ago, will be offered a new, as-yet-undisclosed new role at UBS, Khan, and co-head Tom Naratil said in the memo.

    The duo said the move is a bid to speed up how it makes decisions, limit duplication, and delayer, which generally means cutting jobs. Khan and Naratil made no mention of specific cuts. UBS plans to dismiss as many as 500 bankers as a result of the changes.

    The move is the second leg of UBS’ referral of some of its super-rich and family office clients back into the regions. UBS’ top executive for the super-rich, Josef «Joe» Stadler, is coming away from the revamp with a mandate to expand the bank’s business with wealthy families, including in the U.S.

    We are pleased to announce that we will accelerate decision-making and time to market by delayering, reducing organizational duplication, and increasing business unit autonomy, which comes with more accountability, Khan and Naratil wrote to staff.

  • DBS Wealth Management Expands Avaloq Partnership

    DBS Wealth Management Expands Avaloq Partnership

    The two partners, which have worked together for more than 10 years, will refine client solutions and accelerate DBS Wealth Management’s digital-led growth strategy using Avaloq’s cloud-based platform.

    Swiss banking software provider Avaloq will expand the scope of its partnership with DBS and help its wealth management arm to deliver more personalized services and enhance its advisory and solutions offerings, the firm announced in a statement on Wednesday.

    The bank will also work with Avaloq on modernizing its technology architecture across tech stacks, application programming interface (API), microservices, open shift containerization and cloud-native applications, which will facilitate better integration with fintechs and other stakeholders, the statement said.

    Discussing the expanded partnership, Sim S Lim, group head of Consumer Banking and Wealth Management, said DBS «is committed to becoming a tech company in our own right by continually investing in and upping the ante in our digital infrastructure, capabilities and solutions.»

    Avaloq has in recent months bolstered its business in Asia with a number of new or expanded deals, including Maybank Premier in Singapore, and Indonesia’s largest banking group Mandiri.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Finantix Expands to Australia

    Finantix Expands to Australia

    Finantix, a global provider of trusted technology to the wealth management, insurance, and banking industries, opened an office in Sydney to further support its expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.

    The Sydney-based office will be run by Martin McCabe who joins Finantix as sales country manager for Australia and Todd Yarrow, senior business development executive for Australia, according to a media release on Friday.

    Australia’s sophisticated financial services sector and ideal position as a key hub for the Asia-Pacific region makes Australia a very attractive market, the firm further said. In addition, the wealth management sector has identified automation as an opportunity to do more with less as a response to rising expectations by Australian consumers, Damien Piper, APAC director at Finantix, said.

    This means that the potential for technology to assist with the remediation of the underlying pain points remains largely unrealized, representing an important growth opportunity for us, he added.

    Martin McCabe has over 20 years of experience in financial technology sales, starting his career at Lloyds of London, before moving to Australia 16 years ago. Since his move, he has worked with IBM servicing the big four banks, was a client director at DST and most recently was with FIS where he was responsible for significantly growing the policy admin/wealth platform business across Asia-Pacific.

    Todd Yarrow brings extensive business development experience to the firm, having previously held a similar role at Iress where he worked with clients in the wealth management and stockbroking markets. He is passionate about introducing next-generation software solutions to the Australian financial services market and is keen to share the benefits of the Finantix portfolio offering with clients to deliver technology solutions across their prospect base.

  • Grab Rolling Out Low-Cost Wealth Products

    Grab Rolling Out Low-Cost Wealth Products

    Grab is looking to tap the trillion-dollar wealth market across South-east Asia by offering low-cost investment products.

    Armed with a huge ambition of seizing South-east Asia’s wealth management market, Grab will first offer simple cash products offering a yield above the small interest derived from cash sitting in banks, said Reuben Lai, senior managing director of Grab Financial Group.

    What we don’t want to do is what typical financial institutions do where they charge 3 percent to 5 percent upfront – it’s a huge put-off. We are going to do away with all these upfront fees and have a pay-as-you-go model in a very transparent way,” said Lai, who was quoted.

    Grab will work with various asset managers and banks to offer cash products by the first half of next year, followed by more complex products later. It will study whether the products are relevant for mass consumers in both pricing and liquidity, he added.

    The firm could also partner or invest in a platform, which could be a regional or global player. As local banks have not been aggressive in pushing exchange-traded funds (ETFs) despite their low-cost nature, Lai believes therein lies opportunities for Grab Financial.

    I don’t think fees (out there) are low, said Lai, even though some banks here have savings plans tied to investments such as ETFs.

    DBS has recently launched ETF products with a flat annual management fee of 0.75 percent without a further sales charge, platform fees and lock-in period.

    To boost the team in its next phase, Grab recently hired Philip Chew, an investment veteran from powerhouse BlackRock, to run Grab’s investment and new business unit.

    It has also hired Leslie Teo, former GIC chief economist, to head up its data science team, with the aim of looking at how to better price financial products, Lai said.

    Grab’s pay-as-you-use models for its consumer finance push gained traction as 70 percent of its drivers in Malaysia have signed on the usage-based insurance sold by Grab’s partner Zhong An Insurance that offers per-day coverage for a daily payment.

    Given the bigger push into wealth and insurance, GrabPay will look to engage the mass affluent in the coming months as well, having become the dominant e-wallet in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, said Ooi Huey Tyng, who manages the GrabPay business in most of Southeast Asia.

    In about 18 months, GrabPay secured e-money licenses in six countries, and now commands the largest total payment value (TPV) in three, she said, while declining to disclose the absolute figures. With the rapid build-out of the GrabPay wallet, the TPV has also more than doubled in the last six months.

    Many people will say: ‘Are you trying to do an Ant Financial?’ And my answer is: ‘China is one country, we are 10 countries’. It’s very, very different. With the one time the partners plug into us, they get access to our 170 million subscriber base in South-east Asia… and the licenses that we’ve acquired,»said Lai.

    Lees ook:

  • UBS: Billionaire-Controlled Stocks Outperform

    UBS: Billionaire-Controlled Stocks Outperform

    Listed firms controlled by billionaires outperformed the broader market with such entities in Asia leading the pack in relative gains.

    In the past 15 years to 2018-end, billionaire-controlled listed companies posted equity returns of 17.8 percent compared to 9.1 percent for the MSCI benchmark in the same period. By region, Asia Pacific ranked second in demonstrating this trend delivering annualized average returns of 18.3 percent – just 0.1 percent behind the first-ranked Americas.

    According to a report co-published by UBS and PwC, the outperformance can be attributed to what it called the billionaire effect or the tendency for self-made entrepreneurs for smart risk appetite and longer-term planning.

    Political uncertainty and economic volatility led global wealth to dip 4.3 percent and Asia was not immune, registering a $217.6 billion wealth drop and a decrease of billionaires by 7.4 percent to 754.

    Still, the region boasted a quadrupling of billionaire wealth in the last five years and unsurprisingly, China led the regional ranks with 325 billionaires. Interestingly, the region was also a significant contributor to female billionaire wealth, which grew by a quarter to $871.2 billion globally, with the number of billionaires doubling over the last five years.

    Entrepreneurs, which account for 70 percent of our client base in Asia Pacific, has been the driving force of the rapid wealth creation in the region, said Amy Lo, co-head wealth management Asia Pacific at UBS Global Wealth Management.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Deutsche Bank Hires Head of China Onshore Wealth Management

    Deutsche Bank Hires Head of China Onshore Wealth Management

    Deutsche Bank’s recruitment drive for the private bank in Asia persists, this time with the hire of a new head of onshore wealth management in China.

    Jeffrey Yen Chieh Peng joins the bank as managing director and head of China onshore wealth management, effective today. According to the bank’s announcement, Peng will oversee and strengthen the onshore platform, develop and execute long-term expansion strategies and advise on the overall Greater China business.

    In his new Shanghai-based role, Peng report to Kanas Chan, head of North Asia wealth management; Feng Gao, chairman of Deutsche Bank (China) Co., Ltd. and China chief country officer of Deutsche Bank; and Rose Zhu, president of Deutsche Bank (China) Co., Ltd.

    Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Peng was most recently with Bank of Singapore where he was a managing director and head of strategic alliance and «IAM Excellence Center» for Greater China and North Asia. Previously, Peng also spent 11 years with UBS where he was last an executive director and head of wealth management investment products and services in China.

    Despite cost-cutting pressures, the bank has stayed in line with its commitment to focus on wealth management, especially in high growth markets like Asia. And within the region, the bank’s recent moves signal its focus on major markets: China and India.

    The bank’s persistent hiring drive recently included the addition of three ex-Julius Baer bankers covering the non-resident Indian segment. And on China, the bank not only notes the still rapidly growing wealth from the segment but an increasingly business-friendly onshore environment.

    We see opportunities in onshore China markets as the high-net-worth client segment grows exponentially, while the environment grows increasingly business-friendly and promising, said Deutsche Bank’s Kansas Chan.

    Peng’s hire is to support our Global China Strategy, investing in and strengthening our onshore and offshore China platform.

  • Greater China Trio Exits BNP Paribas Wealth Management

    Greater China Trio Exits BNP Paribas Wealth Management

    BNP Paribas Wealth Management loses three senior Greater China private bankers, sources said, after shortlived stints of under 12 months.

    Andrew Wong, Peter Lam and Richard Chi will exit the French lender’s private wealth management arm.

    A spokesperson for the bank declined to comment on the exits.

    Wong joined the bank in late 2018 as head of China at BNP Paribas Wealth Management and was subsequently made co-head of the market when the bank appointed ex-HSBC private banker Philip Wong as its other co-head. Wong has over 20 years of senior private banking roles and was most recently with Credit Suisse before joining BNP Paribas.

    Lam reportedly joined BNP Paribas Wealth Management in March this year from Standard Chartered where he was last a managing director and deputy market head. He has over 30 years of China banking experience including with HSBC Private Banking, UBS and Citi.

    Chi’s license records with BNP Paribas kickstarted on June 29, just two months ago. He previously spent more than 12 years with Bank of Singapore and the former ING Asia Private Bank.

    The senior trio’s stay with the bank was short-lived after BNP Paribas sought to replenish its North Asia front office after a number of outflows last year including Wong’s predecessor, Alfred Tsai, who left to join UBP.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • 80 Percent of Thai Wealth Held Onshore

    80 Percent of Thai Wealth Held Onshore

    Lombard Odier is bullish about its onshore partnership strategy in Thailand, claiming that 80 percent of high net worth wealth remains onshore with local banks.

    The bank is bullish on Thailand’s wealth market, citing industry projections of 10-30 percent annual growth of high net worth individuals, depending on segmentation. Interestingly, the billionaire segment is expected to increase the fastest despite an ongoing U.S.-China trade war.

    Growth is here, said Lombard Odier’s APAC CEO Vincent Magnenat, who expressed optimism regarding the bank’s benefits from its four-year-old partnership with major Thai lender Kasikornbank (Kbank).

    Lombard Odier’s ventures into building onshore revenue lines have been supported not only by its investment capabilities but also through effective delivery to meet non-investment needs. According to Magnenat, the new generation of Thai entrepreneurs are increasingly demonstrating not only demand for professional investment management but also wealth planning and family or business governance needs.

    Perfect wealth comes from a combination of wealth and happiness; customers can live a worry-free lifestyle by easing their concerns in the areas of maintenance and succession of wealth, said Jirawat Supornpaibul, head of Kbank’s private banking group in a local media report.

    KBank’s private banking arm has assets under management of 760 billion Thai baht ($25 billion) with more than 11,000 clients and it estimates the latter to grow five percent annually.

  • HSBC Singapore Adds Directors to Board

    HSBC Singapore Adds Directors to Board

    The two new board members will help the bank accelerate its business transformation in Singapore and deepen its foray into the digital space.

    HSBC Bank (Singapore), the local subsidiary of HSBC that includes retail banking and wealth management businesses, is adding Penny Goh and Josh Bottomley to its board of directors, the firm said in a press release on Wednesday.

    Goh is a co-chairman and senior partner of Allen & Gledhill, and leads the law firm’s corporate real estate practice. With the appointment, she will become a member of HSBC Singapore’s Audit and Risk committees. Bottomley is HSBC’s global head of Digital, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, a role he has held since May 2013. He has also held various senior appointments at Google and LexisNexis.

    HSBC said in June 2018 that Singapore was one of eight priority markets globally. In September 2018, HSBC Singapore said it would double the overall combined retail and private banking total wealth and hire more than 400 retail and private banking customer-facing employees over five years.

    Singapore is a growth market for HSBC and one where we want to build scale, and both appointments have a very strong and significant connection in support of delivering the strategy, Mukhtar Hussain, HSBC Singapore chairman and HSBC’s Asia Pacific head for Belt and Road Initiative, said about the appointments.

    Together, both will bring a very strong blend of experience, expertise and ambition in the oversight of HSBC’s Retail Banking and Wealth Management business in Singapore. Moreover, the appointment of such high-caliber individuals reflects the importance and rising prominence of the Singapore franchise for HSBC globally, Hussain added.

    Earlier this month, HSBC CEO John Flint, 51, announced his sudden departure after being at the helm for only 18 months, saying the bank needed a change at the top to address the «challenging global environment.» In the meantime, Noel Quinn, HSBC’s head of global commercial banking is holding the role of interim CEO.

  • Maybank Debuts Wealth Offering in Philippines

    Maybank Debuts Wealth Offering in Philippines

    Maybank launches its first a private wealth management arm in the Philippines, in the midst of trending interest from financial institutions to tap into the nation’s business potential. The bank will open the branch in Makati City in Manilla, which will add to the 67 centers it has in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) bloc. The «Maybank Premier» brand will be deployed to target high net worth individuals with wealth advisory solutions.

    The bank is projecting continued growth in the region and expects its clients to benefit from the bank’s robust ASEAN connectivity according to its group chief strategy officer and chief executive of the international business Michael Foong.

    The Philippines has been in the spotlight in recent times due to growing interest from others to tap into its market for its financial sector potential across various segments.

    Earlier this week, Pru Life UK was reportedly expected to launch a standalone asset management firm in the country. And also in the same week, the nation completed its first blockchain-based remittance from Singapore’s OCBC.

    This wealth management launch is in line with the bank’s focus to continue to develop our group wealth management franchise to capitalize on the region’s growth trajectory, and the Philippines is one of the fastest-growing economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with a burgeoning middle class, said John Chong, group chief executive of Maybank.

    Lees ook:

  • APAC Billionaires Hit the Hardest in 2018

    APAC Billionaires Hit the Hardest in 2018

    Global billionaire wealth and its population have fallen for only the second time since the global financial crisis in 2008, with those in APAC suffering the most.

    After reaching record levels the previous year, global billionaire wealth in 2018 declined by 7 percent to $8.6 trillion, while the billionaire population fell by 5.4 percent to 2,604, according to the 2019 edition of Billionaire Census, published by global ultra high net worth intelligence and data company Wealth X.

    This fall in wealth was largely caused by a slowdown in global growth, persistent trade tensions and a slump in equity markets, the report said. The findings of the report, which has been published annually since 2013, were based on Wealth-X’s global database of more than 1 million records on the world’s wealthiest individuals.

    The report noted that apart from the U.S., U.K., Russia, and France, nearly all of the top 15 countries by billionaire population saw a decline. Asia-Pacific’s billionaire population fell by 13.4 percent, driven by large declines in China, India, and Singapore.

    The region also saw the largest decline in billionaire wealth – billionaires here saw their net worth fall by an average of 9 percent, compared to 7 percent in EMEA and 6 percent in the Americas. The report attributed this to three factors: weak equity market performance on the back of slowing growth, tariff disputes, and emerging market volatility.

    Top Billionaire Countries

    1. United States (705 billionaires)
    2. China (285)
    3. Germany (146)
    4. Russia (102)
    5. United Kingdom (97)
    6. Switzerland (91)
    7. Hong Kong (87)
    8. India (82)
    9. Saudi Arabia (57)
    10. France (55)
    11. United Arab Emirates (55)
    12. Brazil (49)
    13. Italy (47)
    14. Canada (45)
    15. Singapore (39)
    Lees ook:

  • DBS Poaches Wealth Planning Head from Bank of Singapore

    DBS Poaches Wealth Planning Head from Bank of Singapore

    His key responsibilities include driving the expansion of the bank’s wealth planning, family office and insurance offerings, and providing holistic solutions and advisory for high net worth families.

    DBS Bank on Friday has appointed Lee Woon Shiu as Head of Wealth Planning, Family Office and Insurance Solutions at its private bank, it said in a press release on Friday.

    Lee is an industry veteran with more than 20 years’ of experience in advising numerous ultra-high net worth families in Asia-Pacific on wealth planning as well as the establishment and implementation of family governance and philanthropy strategies. He joins DBS from Bank of Singapore, the private banking arm of OCBC Bank, where he has worked since 2004. Most recently, he held the position of Head of Wealth Planning, Trust and Insurance.

    «With Asia at the cusp of a significant intergenerational wealth transfer, we are committed to being our clients’ partner of choice as we help to grow, manage and protect their family’s assets and legacy over time,» Sim S. Lim, Group Head of Consumer Banking & Wealth Management, DBS Bank, said.

    Outside the office, Lee is an adjunct professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Wealth Management Institute (WMI), and has been appointed Expert Panel Member of WMI to provide guidance to the institute and its faculty in developing new IBF standards and curriculum for wealth planning. He is also an Advocate & Solicitor of Singapore, a Solicitor of England & Wales and an accredited Trust & Estate Practitioner under the International Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Vietnam’s millionaire population growth among world’s fastest

    Vietnam’s millionaire population growth among world’s fastest

    Vietnam ranks fourth among the world’s top 10 countries with the fastest millionaire population growth, a new report says. The country’s High Net Worth (HNW) population is set to grow by 10.1 percent each year in the 2018-2023 period, says wealth research firm Wealth-X. This growth rate is only lower than Nigeria at 16.3 percent, Egypt, 12.5 percent and Bangladesh, 11.4 percent, says the report, which covered over 540,000 HNW individuals in the world.

    The report defines HNW population as those with a net worth between $1 million and $30 million. The world’s HNW population grew by 1.9 percent last year from 2017 to 22.4 million people with a combined wealth of $61.3 trillion.

    About 25 percent of the world’s HNW population were located in Asia last year, and their total wealth was $15.48 trillion.

    Although the region’s GDP went up 8 percent last year, its stock markets plunged by more than 11 percent, partly explaining why Asia’s HNW population and total wealth remained virtually unchanged from last year, the report said.

    It also said that the top 10 countries accounted for over 75.2 percent of the global HNW population and 73.8 percent of total HNW wealth last year.

    U.S. topped the list with over 8.6 million people, following by China with 1.8 million, Japan, 1.6 million and Germany over 1 million.

    In another report published last September, Wealth-X said that the number of ultra wealthy population, those with a net worth of over $30 million, has increased by 12.7 percent in Vietnam from 2012 to 2017, making it the third fastest growing country in the world in this category.

    Lees ook:

  • Investors dominate sales of Vietnam’s high-end homes

    Investors dominate sales of Vietnam’s high-end homes

    Investors buy a high percentage of high-end residence purchases in Vietnam, while occupiers take most of the low-end ones. A recent report by real estate market research firm Savills Vietnam, Vietnam Residential Spotlight, says over 70 percent of grade A (high-end) residence buyers in Hanoi are investors. The ratio in Ho Chi Minh City is just as high at 65 percent, says the report, which used data for the 2013-2017 period.

    For the grade B (middle-end) segment in Hanoi, investors accounted for 40 percent of sales, occupiers, 55 percent, and the remaining 5 percent, speculators. The corresponding ratio in HCMC is 45 percent, 50 percent and 5 percent.

    The data indicates that high-end and middle-end residences have become main interests of investors in recent years. They evince almost no interest in grade C (low-end) residences where occupiers make up 85-90 percent of transactions.

    There has been a continuous downwards momentum in residential apartment supply between January and October this year, the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) said in a recent report.

    During this period, total housing supply in the Ho Chi Minh City market fell 39.2 percent. The biggest decrease in supply was in the low-priced apartment segment, which was down 68 percent, while that of high-end apartments fell 9.6 percent and mid-range went down 37.5 percent.

    The association warned that the structure of real estate supply showed a serious disequilibrium in the market, with low priced apartments taking up only 19.3 percent of total supply while luxury apartments took up a third.

    This showed a mismatch between demand and supply, posing a risk to sustainable development and social welfare, it said.

    However, Savills forecasts that low-end residences will dominate HCMC’s supply in 2020 at 61 percent, while in Hanoi, the middle-end segment will lead the market, taking over half of the supply. At this time, Hanoi will have a higher high-end supply at 15 percent, compared to HCMC at 8 percent.

    Lees ook:

  • Saigon apartment sales dip to lowest in 18 months

    Saigon apartment sales dip to lowest in 18 months

    The third quarter of 2018 saw apartment liquidity in Saigon fall to the lowest level in six consecutive quarters. According to property services provider Savills Vietnam, only 10,000 apartments were traded in Saigon in the third quarter of this year. The apartment sales were down 30 percent from last quarter and down 13 percent year-on-year.

    Grace C apartments took up 54 percent of total sales.

    Savills forecasts that by 2020, more than 124,000 apartments will be offered in the market, with Districts 2 and 9 in the eastern part of the city accounting for 55 percent of total supply.

    Meanwhile, another recent report compiled by property services provider CBRE Vietnam has reported even lower sales than Savills, at only 6,568 apartments sold in Q3. According to CBRE, sales fell 7 percent from the previous quarter, and was down 16 percent over the same period in 2017.

    Large disparities between real estate reports have existed between these two companies and are attributed to differences in statistical methodology.

    Recently, the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) released a report on the housing market saying that as of October 31, 2018, there has been a continuous downwards momentum in apartment supply from the beginning of the year.

    During this period, total housing supply in the Saigon market fell 39.2 percent. The supply of high-end luxury apartments fell 9.6 percent, and that of midrange apartments by 37.5 percent. But the biggest decrease in supply was in the low-priced apartment segment, which was down 68 percent.

    The association warned that the structure of real estate supply showed a serious disequilibrium in the market, with low priced apartments taking up only 19.3 percent of total supply while luxury apartments take up a third.

    This showed a mismatch between demand and supply, posing a risk to sustainable development and social welfare, it said.