33 THE FINAL WORD — Sustainability and ESG risk

KOTAK MAHINDRA BANK

While the pandemic accelerated digital transformation for most private banks in the region, the growth curves of domestic lenders often differ from international players. To recognise the effort of domestic banks, Asian Private Banker added this category in 2021.

The severe pandemic situation in India over the last two years has made in-person meetings extremely challenging and has put client onboarding on hold initially since banks weren’t able to conduct KYC verification. Standing at the forefront of digital transformation, Kotak Mahindra Bank was the first bank in India to launch endto-end digital customer bank account opening with a video-based KYC solution.

The solution not only allowed bank managers to verify original documents and detect fraud with liveliness checks and AI based photo-matching functions, it also significantly reduced the time needed for account opening from four to five days to five to six hours.

Another key business process affected by the pandemic was the collection of physical documentation required for high-value transaction requests which are not permitted to be processed through digital platforms. In order to ensure continuity of business and provide a seamless customer experience, Kotak Mahindra Bank launched a digital signature solution which substantially shortened the time needed to take and verify client orders while reducing the bank’s carbon footprint by going paperless. Kotak Mahindra Bank caters to both the banking and investment needs of clients, which is a rather unique business model only shared by a few of the largest wealth managers in the country. Being part of the banking system, Kotak Wealth Management, Kotak Mahindra Bank's private banking arm, has to comply with both banking and securities market regulations, which require a KYC and risk profile review of all U/HNW clients every two years.

The bank turned the entire process into a self-served solution for clients and — after obtaining the consent of clients — tapped into the country’s Unique Identification numbers, named as "Aadhaar", issued to all residents of India (the Indian equivalent of the US Social Security numbers). This served as a golden data source to verify KYC information.

These changes have been done and overseen by a dedicated digital team which sits within the wealth management business. The objective of the team was not just to digitise, but also to improve the adoption of current platforms by conducting customer and RM surveys to take feedback and understand gaps in the current offerings. Such a well planned digital makeover resulted in an impressive 83% adoption rate of the bank’s digital platform among active clients.

For all these reasons, Kotak Mahindra Bank is the winner of Asian Private Banker’s inaugural Best Domestic Private Bank – Digital Innovation & Services 2021 Award for Distinction. The past two years or so have accelerated the rate of technological and digital adoption at private banks across the region, given the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. From hyper-personalisation to digital onboarding and KYC, what will be the biggest focus in terms of tech deployment for the industry in 2022 and where do the gaps lie?

Tan Siew Meng, regional head, Asia Pacific, HSBC Global Private Banking We’re investing significantly in new technology and digitalisation as a core growth enabler. In fact, over the next two years, around US$100 million of investments in Global Private Banking in Asia are earmarked for technology and digital upgrades. And we’ve made major progress. Last year, we reached a number of important milestones that laid the groundwork for our ambitious agenda. We launched Online Trading; GPB Chat, which enables our clients to communicate instantly and securely with their Relationship Management team using their preferred native social media source; a revamped Investments & Research portal; and an e-Signature solution which allows new-to-bank clients to onboard by signing, submitting and receiving documents digitally, whether via mobile or desktop.

In 2022, we will continue to focus on building a rich digital ecosystem of integrated digital tools and solutions that complements our hightouch, expert-led service model. Our clients lead busy daily lives and are increasingly regional, international and global in nature, so they want convenience, flexibility, simplicity, and personalisation in the way they interact and bank with us. The experience we are designing is shaped by these expectations.

Raymond Ang, global head, Affluent Clients, Standard Chartered Bank The past two years have brought about key behavioural changes in investors, primarily in how they perform banking services. Today, we are seeing more UHNW/ HNW individuals using digital services offered by banks.

This trend has prompted banks to focus more on digitisation of processes, improving access to information and enabling online transaction and trading capabilities. Indeed, hyperpersonalisation will remain important in 2022 in order to offer what clients need. This highlights the importance of using data to better understand clients in order to provide personalised advice and solutions that meet their needs.

At the same time, we recognise the increasing role of the RM in complementing the client experience. While many basic transactions can be digitally fulfilled, the human touch remains crucial in private banking, which is a high-touch and personal business. Yet, we see equipping RMs with better digital tools as equally essential to enable RMs to respond quickly to event triggers, share personal ideas with clients and interact easily and effortlessly with clients through the same digital communication channel.

Nonetheless, we see gaps and intense pressures especially coming from large technology companies that are eating into traditional wealth channels with their super apps. Many private banks also have some way to go to fully take advantage of the data they have.

In 2022, I expect to start seeing an expansion on the use of data, possibly in partnership with vendor platforms to draw on the strength of their expertise in better data analysis and AI. There are equally opportunities for partnerships in areas such as insurance, legal and lifestyle services through a digital integration of platforms. Closely related to technology would be the ability for private banks to offer cryptocurrencies as a wealth product, in a safe and trusted way.

August Hatecke, co-head Wealth Management Asia Pacific at UBS Global Wealth Management Hyper-personalisation is key in offerings to private clients today. The main focus is to make it easy and seamless for clients to interact and bank with us.

We reimagine customer service by delivering a client experience that’s as personal as clients’ needs and ensuring what clients get is relevant to them and on-time so that they can act on opportunities anytime and anywhere. This makes interacting with us simple, seamless and intuitive.

Tech deployment is especially important for our business to stay agile during the pandemic. In 2021, our monthly online trading revenue increased by 65% YoY (Jan-Oct). We also saw more digital first timers amongst clients.

Take Direct Investment Insights as an example which we launched early last year. It empowers investors with timely, relevant and actionable investment insights. Asia is the first region in the world to launch this innovative offering.

Clients are now able to receive insights based on their financial interests together with related trading cases on UBS Mobile Banking app and E-Banking website. With just one click away, they get relevant content with actionable trading cases – a pioneer in the industry where we link insights with execution. Clients can also turn on push notifications on their mobiles to get alerts when new relevant content is available.

Terence Chow, head, RBC Wealth Management – Asia This year, private banks will continue to digitise their capabilities to offer integrated access to their products and services at attractive fees, including banking, brokerage and portfolio management.

Firms will prioritise equipping relationship managers with portfolio and advisory tools — such as dashboards, data, client and market insights — that enable them to deliver high quality, personal and impactful advice to clients. To achieve this, private banks will need to deploy AI and data-driven technologies at scale across the value-chain, as well as partnering with fintechs to take advantage of their utility and advanced solutions, and meet the evolving needs and expectations of clients.

While COVID-19 has accelerated digital investment and adoption over the past two years, in some cases this may actually increase the barriers to working with third parties. For example, private banks that rely heavily on global platforms or are carrying larger legacy systems may be less nimble to integrate with fintechs. Architecture agility is key to facilitating this.

Omar Shokur, CEO Asia, Branch Manager Singapore, Indosuez Wealth Management Our digital initiatives will grow and develop with diverse experiences to enable Indosuez to develop new products and services that best meet the new expectations of its clients around the world. We always look at the future while not losing sight of our fundamental customer-centric approach: 100% human and 100% digital.

The paradox is that those tools were first deployed in retail banking due to the sheer breadth and scale of retail customers. We have to admit that many wealth managers are still playing catch up and 2022 will be an important year for us to fill this gap.

Benjamin Cavalli, head of Wealth Management Asia Pacific, Credit Suisse We see client experience and data capabilities as two critical drivers of success in the new age. Our technology and platform strategy puts the client at the centre, with three key objectives: ‘empower’, ‘connect’, and ‘protect’.

With ‘empower’, we ask: “what does wealth advice look like in the age of Amazon and Netflix?” We have been making significant investments to be able to deliver directto-client, actionable and holistic advice, investment ideas, and product content, in a relevant, personalised and timely manner. Due to the ever-growing amount and complexity of content and data, the only way to approach this challenge is with technology. For example, using advanced data analytics and machine learning models, we can draw on the strength of our house view content, research insights, and market events, to deliver personalised and actionable investment ideas, sustainability offerings, take-profit/loss alerts, portfolio quality reports, etc, to clients. We believe the real opportunity is in being able to offer a flexible hybrid service model, responding to clients’ needs and preferences.

In terms of ‘connect’, digitalisation has become the new normal for clients and for us. To service clients anytime and anywhere, we keep investing in an omni-channel client experience. CS Chat and Digital Private Bank (DPB) are our award-winning digital solutions, used by clients and RMs for secure messaging and collaboration, portfolio and investment insights, research, news, trading, and other self-service capabilities. Furthermore, we are investing in building connectivity with the wider ecosystem, to respond to clients’ needs, and secure our ability to accelerate organic and non-organic opportunities with intermediaries, new onshore markets, new client segments, and develop new monetisation opportunities. As an organisation, we actively participate in the wealth ecosystem through partnerships and collaborations.

With ‘protect’, we consider compliance as a competitive advantage. Transparency and adherence to regulation are crucial to building lasting relationships and trust with clients. We are investing in advanced RegTech capabilities across AML, KYC, customer protection, and regulatory and tax reporting. These capabilities allow us to adapt quickly to changing regulations and focus on improving client and RM experience. One notable example for us is iSAP, a technology platform we designed and built in-house to address the complex set of investment suitability processes across the client lifecycle — from the client’s investment profile, through to product due diligence, suitability and cross-border rules, pricing, as well as the automation of personalised pretrade risk disclosures. With such technology, we are able to move and adapt faster, with full transparency across the advisory journey. We can now unlock exciting opportunities, such as direct-to-client advisory at scale, combining content with advanced analytics and predictive machine learning models to offer personalised insights and actionable advice to clients – while being fully transparent and compliant.

Michael Blake, Asia CEO, Union Bancaire Privée Current discussions around technology are much more nuanced and granular than before. Five years ago, technology’s impact on wealth management was presented as a zero-sum game, as a binary choice between digital or human engagement. The debate has clearly moved on and we certainly see a strong possibility for a hybrid model, where technology enables richer conversations with clients. It may encompass digital communication channels, involve AI-assisted investment insights and asset allocation, or simply be about removing some of the pain factors in the way that clients interact with us. Precisely targeted technology can have a transformative impact on client relationships by supporting, rather than removing, the role of the relationship manager.

For the mass affluent wealth business, there's a much stronger argument for a lighter touch but higher volume model, which is largely digitally driven. However, for us as a pure private bank player, human interaction remains the core which we build around, so we see technology as an enabler, boosting our proposition, enhancing our investment capabilities and improving delivery. Kwang Kam Shing, CEO of J.P. Morgan Private Bank Asia J.P. Morgan recently announced that its technology budget will increase by 26% to US$12 billion this year. Our private bank’s core technological and digital adoption focuses on enhancing the client and advisor experience.

The advisor experience will be key to digital adoption — especially as we plan to onboard a lot of new advisors. By having controls in place, we need to ensure all of these new advisors can seamlessly address clients’ needs and assimilate as our private bank business scales.

The next major focus for the industry is to apply AI / machine learning to strengthen clients and internal processes. That could mean a lot of things – but one key example could be how a private bank can mobilise some of the industry and market data points they already capture to drive better automation and a more personalised customer experience.

With all this said, private banks serving UHNWIs remain a high touch business but the more we can eliminate cumbersome administrative work for our advisors, the more value we can ultimately bring to clients. Andreas Zingg, COO APAC, Bank Julius Baer The digital landscape is evolving fast and we need to ensure our digital strategy enables us to stay competitive. As such, technology remains a key strategic long-term driver and enabler of sustainable business growth for Julius Baer.

We are focused on staying ahead of the game in adapting to the changing client, regulatory and competitive environment and to enhance our innovation capabilities. Our bank established its innovation lab ‘Launchpad’ in Singapore in the second half of 2021, to develop new propositions as well as explore cutting edge technologies to deliver maximum value to clients.

Looking ahead, we expect the digital transformation of the private banking industry to continue at an accelerated pace in 2022. At Julius Baer, the aim is to accelerate our transformation journey through constant innovation. As such, we will enhance our digital client touchpoints, interaction and transaction capabilities, sustainable investments, digital assets, and next generation offerings, while investing in state-of-the art systems for our RMs and clients.

As priorities across the industry tend to be similar, we believe it is the execution that will make the difference, especially in terms of user experience, design and integration aspects. Therefore, one of our major investments remains in our people — to provide purpose, shared values, and growth opportunities in an inspiring, collaborative, and agile work environment.

While investment tools allow bankers and advisors to produce more systematic and regular investment ideas for clients, such investment tools are, as their name suggests, merely tools. Such tools are only successful if used by the right expert. We expect our wealth managers and advisors to personalise and tailor every proposal to their clients’ needs and to engage regularly with the clients on the suitability and performance of each investment proposal. That is the wealth management differential.

On KYC / onboarding tools, we are still assessing these tools and the idea to integrate such tools. Every client is more than a number and it is important that we assess new clients personally with a human touch. We will ensure that should we choose to adopt such digital KYC / onboarding tools, they will be in line with the potential guidelines and respective frameworks of local regulators. Cai Xinfa, Ping An Group executive, special assistant to the Bank’s president and head of retail banking, Ping An Bank In 2022, in terms of tech deployment, the private bank will focus on: improvement of digitalisation and intelligence of personalised investment advisory services for clients, as well as big data intelligent monitoring of investment risks in the underlying assets.

AI, big data, cloud computing and other technological means will be introduced into the building of a digital system platform that enables the integration of online and offline service channels, as well as the collaborative services of account managers and experts in different fields, making wealth management instruments and asset allocation more diverse and scientific, to meet the personalised needs of clients.

The challenge is to build a platform for smooth integration and collaboration, as well as more automated and intelligent capabilities for product R&D, investment portfolio, valuation management, investment advice, etc.

In addition, given the continuous impact of the pandemic on the global economy, it is necessary to pay more attention to the risk control of financial investment in underlying assets. Through the use of big data, public opinion analysis and other technological means, risks can be monitored and avoided in real time. There is still much room for improvement in the digitalisation and intelligence aspects of the industry. Alok Saigal, head, Private Wealth, Edelweiss Wealth Management The entire banking ecosystem needs technology investments. However, mid-office needs more focused investments. Over the past two years, many improvements have happened in reporting, client onboarding, and investment analysis. Therefore, we think the mid-office function, which provides the actual customer experience, needs more technology advancements.

CREDIT SUISSE

2021 was challenging for investments in the Greater China region, with regulatory clampdowns and looming bond defaults creating great uncertainty for investors. Credit Suisse Wealth Management weathered the storm in the Hong Kong market with its three pillars in client servicing: timely and relevant advice, breadth and depth of the bank’s product platform and innovative approach to catering to clients’ needs. Combined with the precise execution of their business strategies, the bank managed to achieve strong growth in both the top line and bottom line in 2021.

Credit Suisse has been serving the Hong Kong market since 1969 and currently banks 60% of the top 20 billionaires on the Forbes Hong Kong list. The Hong Kong team is known for a well-rounded service offering of compelling investment solutions, timely advisory services and, in particular, innovative bespoke integrated individual-corporate solutions that bring into play the Credit Suisse platform.

In a year of strong market volatility, the bank received a referral from an existing UHNW client to a new UHNW client keen on setting up with Credit Suisse a leveraged advisory mandate. (The bank has a similar arrangement with the portfolio owned by the existing client.) This case study demonstrated the excellent RM-client relationship. The bank was able to serve the new client with efficient account opening and investment execution processes, while providing a flexible and efficient fee structure.

Led by experienced market group heads, the Hong Kong team shared multiple case studies on customised solution offerings showing a deep understanding of clients’ needs and capable of delivering multi-hundred

Rickie Chan market group head Hong Kong, Credit Suisse Wealth Management Asia Pacific Eddy Sze market group head Hong Kong, Credit Suisse Wealth Management Asia Pacific

“We are truly honoured to win the Best Private Bank – Hong Kong award for the second time. This award is testament to the resilience of our wealth management franchise in the region despite a challenging environment last year.

Our team continued to make progress by delivering best-in-class banking solutions and bringing into play innovative digital tools to stay connected with clients. We will continue to work in close partnership with clients across both their private and corporate needs to help them achieve their financial goals.”

- Rickie Chan and Eddy Sze, market group heads Hong Kong, Credit Suisse Wealth Management Asia Pacific

million dollar transactions in a timely manner. This cannot be done without close collaboration between the wealth management team and the investment bankers, as well as other product specialists in the broader banking group.

While managing to keep the cost-efficiency ratio at the lower end, the bank in 2021 invested in talents, recruited a substantial number of RMs. To expand its presence in Hong Kong, the bank opted for a combination of organic growth and selective external senior hires, in addition to grooming a strong cohort of younger next-gen bankers with in-depth client service expertise.

Credit Suisse is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Hong Kong for 2021.

Ranjit Khanna CEO, Singapore & head of Wealth Management South Asia, Union Bancaire Privée

UNION BANCAIRE PRIVEE

2021 was a year of achievements for UBP with remarkable developments across multiple investment products. The broad-based improvements benefited the profitability and AUM in Singapore and built a strong foundation for the growth of the bank’s business in the region.

UBP has translated its segregated multi-asset class DPM portfolios into a transparent, UCITS-compliant unitised fund vehicle, providing a much more convenient channel for clients to invest in the bank’s conviction. The fund was launched in January 2021, blessed by a year full of investment volatility where clients turned their focus on discretionary investments: in less than 12 months, clients invested over US$330 million in this new offering and UBP now has a 34% DPM penetration rate amongst its clients in Singapore, marking an astonishing 207% YoY increase in DPM penetration.

Besides unitising the bank’s DPM offering, UBP catered to clients’ strong interest in private investments: its Private Markets Group (PMG), set up in 2015, offers clients access to exclusive transactions at a threshold as low as US$250,000 and a selection of eight to 10 broad-ranging opportunities offered per year, including high-profile names in aerospace manufacturing, as well as ownerships of art intellectual property (IP) rights and sports clubs. The PMG team currently manages over US$300 million in Singapore, with net inflows growing 114% YoY.

Following the firm’s technology revamp last year, UBP refocused on its FX advisory platform offering and

“We are extremely pleased to have received the Best Private Bank – Singapore award from Asian Private Banker for the third consecutive year. This recognition highlights our people’s dedication, resilience, and ongoing commitment to excellence to create long-term value for clients with differentiated and innovative solutions.”

- Ranjit Khanna, CEO, Singapore & head of Wealth Management South Asia, Union Bancaire Privée

introduced a new FX margining system which offers enhanced margining and netting to sophisticated investors. This development attracted new business from FX-savvy clients and allowed the bank to double its client base on its FX platform in less than a year.

The combination of all these developments allowed the bank to achieve a double-digit expansion of its revenue and a close to 20% increase in AUM, with a double-digit annualised growth in net new assets in Singapore.

The judging panel was impressed by the Swiss pureplay’s progress in building a well rounded product portfolio in Asia, which accurately identified U/HNWI investment appetite in Singapore and expanded the bank’s AUM and DPM book in the process.

For the third consecutive year, UBP is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Singapore.

Sourcing talent in the region’s private bank industry is becoming tougher than ever, pushing up hiring costs across the region. How can private banks ensure they have adequate access to the talented relationship managers and other front-line staff over the coming years? What is the key to attracting the right candidates?

Kwang Kam Shing, CEO of J.P. Morgan Private Bank Asia Recruiting, training and retaining talent are always top of mind and remain a priority. Our Private Bank has more than 2,500 advisors globally, and it is indisputably our \greatest asset.

We believe that world-class people build worldclass, global businesses and that diversity, equity and inclusion is of utmost importance as we know that diverse companies outperform less diverse ones. The right talent is instrumental in building purpose, value and culture to thrive in the long term. And fostering the right culture in turn helps attract the right people.

For us the key to attracting talent is to be creative on who you hire – expanding the scope of the talent pipeline where appropriate.

Our external non-lateral hires and our internal mobility programme have been successful. Internal Mobility can be demonstrated through our bench of senior advisors on the leadership team, many of whom have garnered decades of experience at J.P. Morgan but are actually relatively new to their roles or to the private banking arm. We believe this allows everyone to offer fresh, different perspectives. Many of our senior advisors are home-grown talents, introduced via our structured global analyst and associate programmes.

Overall at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, we have first-class teams supporting our advisors and clients, including global and regional Solutions specialists, dedicated lending and wealth advisory teams – which altogether make our Integrated Team Model.

We have hired talent without prior private banking background, such as accountants, lawyers, corporate and investment bankers, or financial journalists. With the right training, their own unique networks, and our integrated team model operations, many of these external non-lateral hires have been able to contribute effectively. Jason Moo, head Private Banking South East Asia and branch manager Singapore, Bank Julius Baer Our culture, values and purpose are what set us apart from the competition. The value we place on the adaptability and resilience of our staff is higher than ever, and we attract talent with the merit to sustain the highest standards of service for clients.

Whether the trends of the 'new normal' will continue to shift or slightly revert in the coming years, the capabilities we have had to explore — such as working from home or taking on flexible work hours within our teams — have been crucial to overcoming the many obstacles borne from the pandemic, and it is likely that incoming talent will be familiar with modern systems of business made possible by sophisticated remote access. It is important that we stay relevant not only to clients, but for staff to be able to engage appropriately with all our partners and stakeholders in a contemporary way.

A core part of the digitalisation journey has been in training staff to be fluent in their virtual client engagement skills, and we will invest in digital in 2022 and beyond with online training programmes for our relationship managers, helping them practise and improve their client experience through technology. We have enhanced our learning and development initiatives and employees are encouraged to take advantage of our online development courses.

We firmly believe that that the professional and personal competence of our team is at the very heart of our success, and paramount to the ongoing employability of our staff. It remains vitally important for us to equip and empower employees so that they may continuously learn, innovate, and grow in order to stay competitive and drive sustainable performance. Terence Chow, head, RBC Wealth Management – Asia In terms of sourcing talent, we firmly believe that culture and leadership are the key ingredients to attracting the best. However, private banks are not just competing with each other for talented professionals, we’re actually competing with many other industries as well – notably the technology sector.

As the saying goes: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This is why at RBC, we spend a lot of time talking about our purpose – helping clients thrive and communities prosper. This is central to everything we do, how we conduct ourselves, how we treat each other and our clients and how we work together. Diversity of thought, of skills, and backgrounds – these are all integral components to building and sustaining a culture that attracts the best talent.

And it’s not just about external hires. I would point out the importance of growing and developing talent internally by offering fulfilling careers through challenging roles, formal and informal learning opportunities, and an inclusive culture in which all colleagues can thrive.

Our leadership team lives and breathes these core tenets every day and everyone at RBC is passionate, not just about what we deliver for our clients, colleagues and communities, but also how we deliver it. Vincent Chui, head of Wealth Management, Asia Pacific, Morgan Stanley PWM Asia The core of UHNW private banking always lies with the relationship with clients. RMs hold the key to such relationships whilst giving free rein to their respective firm’s core competencies to deliver excellence. We focus on RMs from top-tier firms who have established and strong client relationships, but who will benefit from our robust integrated platform to fully monetise such relationships and provide holistic services to their key clients, across the spectrum of individual, family and business needs.

Through such new RMs, we are eager to expand and deepen the client reach of Morgan Stanley in Asia, particularly in the Greater China region, growing our client franchise as well as our institutional securities and wealth management businesses.

Tee Fong Seng, CEO AsiaPacific, Pictet Wealth Management For Pictet, it is critical that we attract the right candidates who can thrive on our distinctive platform and business model. We have been steadily growing our RM base by around 50% in the past three years and our AUM base by 40% in the past two years.

Pictet has an established and distinct brand as a private partnership for 216 years with a combination of members of the founding families and outsiders jointly running the firm in a consensual model. We believe our governance model is the best and most client-focused way to run an investment firm. Unencumbered by shareholder pressure, we can take a long-term view and our goal is never to maximise the short term at the expense of clients or the future.

Pictet has always placed a premium not just on being a stable and financially strong firm, but also an investment leader for its clients, across both wealth and asset management franchises. Our wealth management business in Asia has an industry high penetration rate of over 50% of our assets in managed solutions including discretionary and advisory mandates and funds, so the focus of Pictet and of our RMs is to bring Pictet’s investment leadership, our asset allocation expertise and investment performance to clients, especially the UHNW segments and family offices, delivering highquality assets and revenues for the firm. Michael Blake, Asia CEO, Union Bancaire Privée At UBP, we are actively looking for a small number of highly skilled individuals, those with advisory experience of between 10 and 20 years, who want to work with a bank where they can manage clients and, if they wish, build a team. People who join us are often drawn to a bank that takes a balanced commercial approach, that is less hierarchical, and where they can really build durable relationships with clients.

There is a trend too towards some lateral hiring from other parts of the finance industry. We are not only interviewing private bankers, but also talking to corporate bankers who are attracted to the wealth management industry, as well as investment consultants, investment advisors, specialists who have worked in family offices and those with experience in the growing segment of private markets. There is a broad talent pool and there is no shortage of candidates — quite the opposite actually — but it just comes down to finding the right fit for both parties.

Raymond Ang, global head, Affluent Clients, Standard Chartered Bank In general, it is imperative that the bank has a convincing employee value proposition that resonates with potential new hires. People are attracted by strong people leaders and this has helped us in the past few months to attract talents, who might otherwise have chosen a different employer.

Transparent performance management is key where the RM knows what the expected metrics and targets are (e.g. revenues, net new money), how they will be assessed and what reward they can expect based on their performance. One-dimensional hiring from private banks won’t be sufficient and must be complemented with a bench of own talent. It is therefore essential for a private bank to build its own talent via development opportunities, provide growth opportunities within the platform and reskilling opportunities for individuals with adjacent skills to become a banker.

At Standard Chartered, affluent RMs have the opportunity to grow across the affluent continuum into Private Banking. Our investment in the Wealth Academy, launched in partnership with INSEAD, is testimony to our commitment to our people’s career development and charting a progressive career path for them.

Additionally, our network, franchise and brand name recognition in certain markets stand us in good stead against other more established private banks. Lok Yim, head of Deutsche Bank International Private Bank APAC A customised solution is one of our priorities when serving clients. Therefore, we pay great attention to whether candidates can provide tailored advice on top of their experience and knowledge.

With our business spanning different regions around the world, we believe that the opportunity to serve clients in the region with the exposure to our global footprint around the globe is one factor that looks attractive to candidates.

It is not easy to hire talented relationship managers and front-line staff, but it is important for us to complement our existing talent base and help us scale up in targeted footprint markets.

At Deutsche Bank, we are committed to building a talent pool and training our talents from front to back to support the industry growth.

Andy Chai, Asia CEO, Bank J. Safra Sarasin To capture the growing business opportunities, hiring high quality bankers and retaining our talents are of utmost importance. Compared to early 2020, we are pleased that we have almost doubled the private banker headcounts as of today.

Since the private banking industry is still growing, there is a shortage of private bankers. The war for talent is beyond anything we faced in the past. Hence, some private banks have started looking at hiring RMs from the premier banking segment. We would assess their investment knowledge and understanding of the industry before taking them on board and transforming them into private bankers.

J. Safra Sarasin is well capitalised with a strong balance sheet and has over 180 years of history. We are one of the few family owned private banks with a global footprint. Our in-depth insights to the industry, entrepreneurial mindset, open architecture, comprehensive credit offering and robust product platform enable us to support our talents to thrive and to support clients to build their legacy with us. We have a simple organisational structure and open culture which allow staff to work effectively and efficiently, and our private bankers to focus on building their own business.

We are pleased that our brand attracts new talent in all regions. It is only on the back of our culture and versatile platform that we can ensure different types of bankers succeed and clients entrust us with wealth management services.