Winners rationale

How does a private bank remain one step ahead of its peers in what is arguably the region’s most competitive geography — North Asia — and in a client segment whose changing needs and expectations are compelling wealth managers to re-evaluate their business strategy and operations?There is no simple answer, although Credit Suisse provides a compelling formula for private banks that strive for relevance and excellence in services and content, effectiveness in execution, and discipline and foresight in the pursuit of sustainable growth. And it is this formula — which centres on acutely understanding clients’ needs and orchestrating the activities of the entire bank to deliver upon those needs with maximum efficacy and efficiency — that has enabled Credit Suisse to navigate challenging market environments (such as those witnessed in 2019) and steadily gain market share in the region’s HNW segment.

At the heart of Credit Suisse’s proposition to private clients in Asia is its integrated private and investment banking platform and a truly best-in-class spectrum of products and solutions in terms of quality, relevance, and innovativeness. This includes an industry-leading funds and mandates shelf that continues to drive significant inflows from HNW clients and to imbue the bank’s top line with healthy, all-weather stability.

Notable successes in 2019 included strong double-digit performance across all asset-class specific portfolios and a sizeable YoY increase in DPM AUM, significant multi-billion-dollar inflows into advisory mandates, and a resounding response from yield-hungry and cash-heavy HNW clients to an alternative supply-chain financing solution, sourced from Credit Suisse Asset Management.

But the bank’s crowning accomplishment was its ability to exploit its integrated platform to deliver institutional-quality solutions, advice, and content to Credit Suisse’s HNW clients, both onshore and offshore. To achieve this, Credit Suisse struck a deft balance between traditional and digital modes of engagement and delivery, demonstrating the bank’s commitment to innovation and its cognisance of how client preferences and expectations are changing. Thus, HNW clients in 2019 were served by director-to-vice-president-level bankers and received select access to investments, financing, and wealth planning specialists and market strategists.

Not only that, clients were also the benefactors of an expanding suite of digital functions designed to enhance the quality and scope of their interactions with the bank. These included Credit Suisse’s Digital Private Banking platform — incorporating portfolio monitoring, online trading, and secure chat — and Credit Suisse Invest, a digital advisory mandate solution delivering real-time advice and ideas and ranking as the industry’s most sophisticated such offering to date. In North Asia alone, over three-quarters of eligible clients signed up for DPB, while over half of the total trade volume was through the platform. The potency of Credit Suisse Invest is best evidenced by the fact that ideas delivered via the solution were profitable over 70% of the time and catalysed 26% of all client trades during the period under consideration.

Moreover, Credit Suisse continued to demonstrate that it is a bank that converts high-conviction ideas into action. It has long espoused a ‘Supertrends’ thesis, which is front-and-centre of its research output and flagship Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong. But the bank has taken this thesis one step further by implanting ‘Supertrends’ assumptions into its house view on the basis that investors are better off remaining abreast of — and not reacting to — major structural changes. This conviction also played out in Credit Suisse’s delivery of relevant investment opportunities to HNW clients, which in 2019 included funds attentive to robotics, security, digital health, and edutainment themes.

By getting the fundamentals of Asian private banking ‘right’, Credit Suisse in North Asia kept increasing its penetration of HNW investors in the region. AUM attributable to the segment grew on the back of strong net new asset inflows. Moreover, HNW client revenues continued to track at an impressive double-digit three-year CAGR from a strong base.

The bank’s management did a phenomenal job by using new tools and improving processes to increase productivity. Average revenue per RM in North Asia increased 35% YoY for the period under consideration and when benchmarked against the industry and by title, Credit Suisse’s frontline outperformed its peers.

Credit Suisse is the Asian Private Banker’s choice for Best Private Bank — North Asia HNW for 2019.