Winners rationale

In 2018, Julius Baer’s ventures into the Philippines were marked by robust asset growth, an enhanced offering, and further build-out of sustainable revenues, making the Swiss major the standout private banking provider for the international Philippines segment.

The bank registered significant asset growth for the segment throughout the year, due in part to its efforts to expand coverage beyond traditional first-tier cities. In addition to a pipeline of new talent, the bank leveraged its little-advertised onshore partnerships, primarily to leverage financial institutions’ local networks.

Aside from new client acquisition, the lion’s share of net new assets from the Philippines segment derived from its existing client base, owing to a greater focus on key clients with a team-based approach as well as an enhanced offering. The latter includes its capital markets offering, which expanded to include a fixed income direct access client (DAC) business — a strongly favoured asset class for the segment, even amongst the already income-hungry Asian clientele.

Meanwhile, the bank’s structured products revenue surged on the back of an upgraded platform that now allows clients to explore more permutations of underliers and payoffs with lower minimum ticket sizes.

Revenue sustainability of Julius Baer’s Philippines book saw a stellar showing in 2018, with discretionary mandate revenue nearly doubling. Overall mandate penetration, including advisory, has reached half the bank’s Filipino client assets — a high figure even by the standards of very mature markets westward. Further, after a strong 2017 for insurance, the bank continued growing the revenue line by capitalising on one of Asia’s oldest country segments of HNWIs.

And although Julius Baer has been a prolific spender in recent years in a bid to amass scale, the Philippines business itself has demonstrated that efficiency is a necessary criterion for success with a very significant reduction of its cost-income ratio amid a market environment of growing compliance, technology, and staff costs.

Robust growth in assets and revenue coupled with greater efficiency and deep client servicing led Julius Baer to win this year’s award for Best Private Bank – Philippines International.