THE FINAL WORD INVESTMENT
From a portfolio perspective, how important will (a) Chinese assets and (b) alternative investments be for delivering clients’ objectives over the next five years? Benjamin Cavalli, Credit Suisse Private Banking Asia Pacific Accessing onshore wealth across Asia can be complex due to varied business and regulatory environments in this vastly heterogeneous region. At Credit Suisse, we believe in having a strong onshore strategy, which will continue to be a top priority for us. We have been expanding our regional footprint into onshore markets and now have the most diversified onshore/offshore footprint in the industry, and are well positioned to capture opportunities in the region. Beyond the Hong Kong and Singapore regional wealth hubs, we have built very successful onshore businesses for over 10 years in the largest wealth markets in the region. Since 2017, we have expanded our onshore wealth management services to cover Australia, India, Japan, and Thailand. We also serve clients based in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan clients through our international hubs. We are the only true global player that is welldiversified in APAC as we are geographically spread across the whole region. We will continue to evaluate opportunities to make the most of our well-established investment banking footprint across the region, where it has a decadeslong history in most markets. Another key focus is to cement our position as the “Bank for Entrepreneurs” in every market. Vincent Chui, Morgan Stanley Bank Asia Limited H i s t o r i c a l l y, “o n s h o r i n g ” f o r i nte r n at i on a l b an k s i n we a lt h management has been a challenging task. For those that have had a long presence in key onshore markets such as Japan, Taiwan, Korea and India, their market share remains dwarfed by the big local onshore banks. Would emerging onshore opportunities in China or Thailand be different? Maybe, and different banks have different regulatory risk appetites and resources to explore onshore opportunities. For the UHNW segment, customers have very distinct onshore and offshore needs. International banks are in an excellent position to satisfy their offshore needs and, through collaboration with onshore players, can provide
global products white-labelled as onshore products. As these economies grow and the number and size of the UHNW segment expands, there are more than enough opportunities for international banks to operate an offshore model profitably in the next five years. Cedric Lizin, Standard Chartered Bank We see the trend of more individuals keeping their wealth onshore in Asia. We are looking at two opportunities in this respect: expanding onshore and offering offshore solutions based on onshore assets. Many HNW individuals have their businesses and assets onshore and need funding and wealth advice. This presents tremendous opportunities for Standard Chartered as we have had an onshore presence in many markets in Asia for a long time — some for more than 160 years. Our onshore Commercial Banking and Corporate Banking businesses for example already cover the businesses of many HNWIs and UHNWIs. Today, we have a wealth management offering in 13 Asian retail markets onshore on top of a global private banking offering. We are considering the needs of our affluent and HNW/UHNW clients holistically in order to provide an integrated offering to service this continuum of clients. We are also exploring onshore JV opportunities with local players in a couple of markets in Asia. Thanks to Standard Chartered’s extensive onshore presence in emerging markets, we are already offering solutions to clients where they can make investments offshore based on their assets onshore. We are working on expanding such solutions. Steven Lo, Citi Private Bank Asia Pacific Citi has an onshore setup in Hong Kong, Singapore, and India where we serve clients from around the region. Setting up operations onshore is a serious endeavour and not to be taken lightly. It cannot be a “hobby”. The challenge in making an onshore operations viable is to ensure that you have enough product and service differentiation to compete in that local space. For instance, take the Greater Bay area. We could look at a potential local setup there because we can draw on the strength of the insights and experience of our Citi network, which already has a presence there.
Terence Chow, RBC Wealth Management Asia In Singapore, the industr y and government have been making it more attractive for family offices to move their operations onshore. The point is not necessarily to bring all assets onshore, but to create a hub for family offices to operate and thrive. The industry and government have been very accommodative and innovative with new structures such as Variable Capital Companies (VCC), which attract capital that may have otherwise been used within an offshore fund. A number of wealthy families from around the world have chosen Singapore and Hong Kong as their new or alternate home bases in the region in order to access local markets and talent and to benefit from preferential tax treatment. Hong Kong is already an onshore market due to both domestic Hong Kong SAR wealth and the accelerated inflow of Chinese wealth from individuals who are coming to live in Hong Kong, and the outlook is extremely positive. Through the A share Stock Connect scheme, and as the GBA Wealth Management Connect scheme evolves, Hong Kong should thrive as a hybrid onshore-offshore market. Michael Blake, UBP International wealth management remains our core proposition: we see increasing flows to international financial centres, particularly Hong Kong and Singapore, supported by the growth of family offices in the region and the continued internationalisation of regional wealth. At the same time, we retain an open mind about domestic partnership opportunities. Local client proximity combined with international investment expertise is a winning combination on paper. The question is how best – and with whom – to bring it to life. Nitin Jain, Edelweiss Wealth Management The Indian wealth management indust r y is largely an onshore business due to capital account convertibility restrictions. Indians have historically been big investors in traditional asset classes like real estate and gold, and
27
