Winners rationale

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic causing severe disruptions to the Thai economy in 2021, Kiatnakin Phatra Securities managed to deliver a record performance on metrics including AUM and revenue, in addition to hitting landmarks in the development of its discretionary and offshore businesses.

Strong asset and revenue growth during the period under consideration at the Bangkok-based group was delivered in part by Kiatnakin Phatra Securities’ ability to innovate its product offerings.

Arguably the most profound shift in Kiatnakin Phatra Securities’ product offering was the launch of its debut offshore discretionary mandate in October 2020. The product drew on the strength of the group’s existing capabilities in investment advisory to deliver an overall portfolio solution whose open architecture allowed Kiatnakin Phatra Securities to deliver best-in-class third-party managers to clients — a major differentiator compared to some of its peers in the domestic market. Numbers shared with Asian Private Banker showed that the discretionary solution, which comes with a relatively small ticket size, has had strong inflows since its launch.

The judging panel was impressed by improvements made to Kiatnakin Phatra Securities’ private markets platform during the year. In addition to its existing partnerships with KKR & Co and Oaktree Capital, the Thai lender onboarded Blackstone and Brookfield. Over the past 12 months, Kiatnakin Phatra Securities launched three private equity funds focused on strategies including distressed debt and buyouts — all of them heavily oversubscribed by clients.

For Kiatnakin Phatra Securities, 2021 was also characterised by the efforts to ramp up its ETF, offshore equities and Lombard lending programmes, all of which were broadened during the year.

All these enhancements — and broader efforts to encourage clients to take a more holistic, portfolio-driven and long-term approach to their investments — helped drive improvements in the revenue mix at Kiatnakin Phatra Securities, with recurring income enjoying robust year-on-year growth.

The judging panel commends Kiatnakin Phatra Securities for its efforts on the digital front during the year. The Thai lender developed and promoted a series of digital investment advisory content — ranging from podcasts, to infographics and video clips — as part of broader efforts to relieve some of the burden on RMs to deliver investment ideas to clients. Kiatnakin Phatra Securities expanded its digitisation efforts as well in 2021, including the integration of e-Signature and DocuSign into contactless and paperless transactions to shorten processing times for the client onboarding process and product subscriptions.

For these reasons, Kiatnakin Phatra Securities is Asian Private Banker’s Best Domestic Private Bank – Thailand for 2021.