Winners rationale

The ongoing pandemic acted as a two-edged sword for the private wealth management industry in Malaysia: while travel restrictions were in place during most of last year, offshore bankers had a hard time meeting their onshore Malaysian clients during the lockdown.
This created an opportunity for domestic players to build stronger relationships with their multi-banked clients and get involved in business opportunities for which clients used to first reach out to offshore banks. Being a domestic player, Maybank Private managed to grow its wallet share in 2021 by listening to onshore U/HNW clients and meeting their needs.

As economic activities remain muted, Maybank Private stayed close to meeting the liquidity needs of entrepreneurial clients. The bank revamped its credit initiation process and templates for wealth credit facilities to enhance efficiency, broadening the list of acceptable collateral for Lombard loans and conducting annual reviews to enhance collateral parameters.

Maybank Private equipped the team for these opportunities in 2021 through increased collaboration with the group’s business banking and corporate banking segments, strengthening its capability to meet clients’ business needs such as IPOs and private placements.

Since the pandemic raised the awareness of the need for succession planning, Maybank Private introduced new wealth planning tools to its Malaysian clients in 2021, including private trusts and structures that include Universal Life insurance features.

On the digital front, Maybank Private in Malaysia began its first phase of core platform implementation which will be in line with Maybank Private Singapore and Maybank Premier Singapore, improving operational efficiency across branches while ensuring clients can enjoy a streamlined client experience of the same quality, both onshore and offshore.

As market volatility in 2021 vindicated the importance of professional advice and disciplined investments, Maybank Private saw a significant uptake by onshore clients of multi-asset DPMs, with both equity and fixed income asset allocations. The portion of investment assets in the AUM of Maybank Private was up over 30%, and the investment fee income became the main driver of the bank’s strong double-digit increase in revenue.

This heralds a promising trend for the bank: the ability to advise over a bigger portion of clients’ assets in the future, moving away from a typical pain point of many local players — having a large AUM but mostly stalled as low revenue-generating assets.

Maybank is Asian Private Banker’s Best Domestic Private Bank – Malaysiafor 2021.