THE FINAL WORD BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
NNA gathering and account opening have proven challenging in a pandemic-affected world. If we continue to experience lockdowns and travel restrictions in 2021, how can private banking businesses adapt? Tee Fong Seng, Pictet Wealth Management Asia In a post-pandemic world, we believe technology will be playing a key role, ultimately making bankers and financial experts more effective, precise and targeted in the way they work, hence benefiting clients. But it is key to keep the highly personal nature of wealth and asset management in mind. It takes extensive discussion and interaction person-toperson to develop the relationship and nuanced understanding necessary to tailor solutions to each client’s specific needs. Technology won’t be able to replace that. During the past few months, RMs have had to discover new ways to communicate and interact with clients to remain relevant. Set-up of virtual client calls, and thematic and macro presentations are now part of our RMs’ daily toolkit and help them keep clients informed on a large array of topics. Vincent Chui, Morgan Stanley Bank Asia Limited 2020 has been an excellent trading year, given the volatility and near zero rates, and notwithstanding the economic and human impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not see a slowdown in NNA gathering at all. New account opening was a challenge during the early days of the pandemic, but the regulators have provided guidelines which facilitate remote account opening and for low risk jurisdictions such as China and Taiwan, RMs have resumed travel from Hong Kong or Singapore to meet clients there. I expect new account openings will gradually return to their normal pace. Cedric Lizin, Standard Chartered Bank We have continued to open accounts during the pandemic as we quickly adapted to the unexpected challenges brought about by the pandemic. We have accelerated the implementation of many digital initiatives, including the digitisation of the account opening process. Our quick response has allowed us to continue opening accounts for clients despite lockdowns. Clients have quickly accepted and adopted new ways of engagement — such as via video conferencing instead of face-to-face meetings, and using the mobile app for basic banking services. As an anecdote: we
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have an 80-year-old client who was amongst the first to register for our SC Private Bank app when the pandemic hit. The Net New Money performance of our offshore business has been higher in 2020 than in 2019. Anirudha Taparia, IIFL Wealth Management Ltd New asset gathering will remain a challenge while restrictions remain. To adapt, private banks will need to deepen their business intelligence draw on the strength of existing networks to help relationship managers prospect. Businesses need to proactively engage with their clients, intuitively understand their client’s nuanced needs, and then create customised solutions that meet these nuanced needs. Empowering RMs with tools to mine their own client bases or providing actionable intelligence on existing portfolios to deepen wallet share will be key areas to develop. In terms of account opening, the pandemic has ensured that digital account opening is critical – the process will need to be automated to the extent possible while keeping in mind existing regulations and compliance requirements. With clients and RMs used to meeting virtually, it may lead to reduced travels or commutes, improving productivity and efficiency, with resultant cost savings. Also, in an era of restricted or limited interactions, the quality and honesty of communication will become integral. In that regard, technology will act as a great enabler and solutions need to be deployed to ensure that the lines of communication are always open, and the clients are constantly connected to their wealth advisors. Steven Lo, Citi Private Bank Asia Pacific We were fortunate that our capital markets business performed exceptionally well during 2020. We had anticipated strong single digit growth but we ended up with solid double digit performance instead. Despite the inability to travel and meet clients in person, our client acquisition efforts were still quite good. We were able to grow our AUM substantially as clients looked to consolidate their relationships and prospects were impressed by our ability to perform in such an adverse environment. Although nothing beats in-person interaction, I believe our staff were quite focused on engaging prospects and clients virtually on an ongoing basis with advice and curated programming. We will monitor the situation and with some of the easing
of measures happening, albeit slowly in some cases, I believe we will be able to resume some form of in-person interaction — within the guidelines and within the comfort level of both our clients and staff. Terence Chow, RBC Wealth Management Asia A private banker can differentiate his or her value to a client by offering personalised service. During the pandemic, private bankers have had to be more creative in how they do so. This is particularly difficult for new bankers or those who have just moved firms, as they want to meet their clients face-to-face to show respect and build a personal relationship. The industry therefore needs to develop new ways to build trust with clients digitally. A wealth manager’s ability to differentiate and specialise has been critical in order to stand out from the crowd during the pandemic. RBC Wealth Management specialises in helping Asia’s global families, which are families connected to Asia but also Canada, the US and UK for reasons such as education, business, property or lifestyle. As a result of the lockdowns, global families are facing even greater complexity when managing their wealth across borders. By helping them manage their affairs through the pandemic, we have been able to deliver true value beyond commoditised solutions. By taking the time to understand our clients, their goals and drivers, conversations around wealth transfer and mortality have also come to the fore during the pandemic. This is allowing private bankers to offer a broader range of solutions. Oscar Liu, Noah Holdings International Limited “No one is a separated island.” Humanity’s interactions under a lockdown crisis are going through great tests. For private banking services, how to give full play to the advantages of digital transformation and maintain human bonding in front of cold screens at this pivotal moment is one common challenge. To cope with the tough moment, the management team of Noah Holdings has sought to upgrade its current model of RMs serving clients from a single RM model to a teamwork-based “iron triangle” model, so that “talents’ capability gaps” are converted into “capability pools”. Also, the execution of the transformation fulfils to the maximum degree the triple needs of “Know Your Clients“ (KYC), ”Know Your Agents“ (KYA) and
