Winners rationale

Few, if any, foreign private banks are more successful in building synergies between their onshore India and non-resident Indian (NRI) businesses to deliver a comprehensive Indian wealth management proposition than BNP Paribas. And, if proof were needed, in 2017 the French heavyweight continued to reap the benefits of its unified approach to creating business across interlinked markets, delivering robust economic performance involving all key metrics. That included increasing revenues, asset growth and client penetration.

On the back of an impressive year for its NRI Business, BNP Paribas Wealth Management in 2017 cemented its status in India as a true ‘one-banking’ player capable of delivering a full arsenal of solutions to a sophisticated pool of clients. Much of this is made possible on account of BNP Paribas’ status as one of the few global players in India to have a Non Banking Finance Company (NBFC), enabling it to provide sophisticated financing solutions such as tailor-made credit structuring and liquidity extraction flexibility.

Moreover, its demonstrated ability to leverage its corporate and institutional, investment and retail banking arms allows the bank to offer its entrepreneurial client base a “business owners’ advisory” model focusing on clients’ business assets, liabilities and large transactions. Accordingly, the firm’s investment and financing solutions are among the biggest revenue generators for the private bank.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management has also devoted a great amount of attention to increasing its clients’ experience. That extends beyond tailored events and networking opportunities as clients felt the benefit from the global rollout of a suite of digital tools in 2017, increasing the number of client touch points and the quality of their interactions.

Internally, BNP Paribas Wealth Management devotes resources to upskilling and optimising its talent: 100% of staff took part in training programmes in India, new joiners were subject to intensive onboarding programmes in Singapore and, most importantly, the bank has placed an emphasis on achieving gender diversity in the India team.

Ultimately, the results speak for themselves: since 2012, BNP Paribas Wealth Management has registered high double-digit multi-year growth across NNA and AUM, revenues, client accounts, headcount and a reduction in cost/income ratio in India, effectively demonstrating momentum, relevance and sustainability.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – India Domestic for 2017.