Winners rationale

The vision of progressively shifting away from non-standard private credit products since 2019 has distinguished Noah from its peers and set up a robust, resilient foundation for the firm to establish a wealth management business model that is both compliant and lucrative for many years to come.

Noah embarked on the journey of standardisation transformation in the third quarter of 2019 and hasn’t distributed any single-counterparty private credit products since. In 2021, the firm completed the redemption of RMB32 billion private credit assets in AUM and became the first player in the market to complete the transformation of its offering to NAV-based products.

While the size of client assets managed by the firm slightly decreased due to redemption of non-standardised assets, Noah managed to not only compensate the loss of transaction revenue from private credit products sales with increased sales of standardized NAV products, including secondary market equity funds and mutual funds.

In a year of tremendous market volatility in China, Noah proved its worth to clients with a diverse, open-architecture product platform. The wealth manager worked with 18 out of the top 20 mutual funds in China and accumulated roughly RMB90 billion in assets under administration (AUA) in secondary market equity products after the transformation. Noah has been one of the exclusive channels for HNW clients to access many of the top-tier financial products and manages clients’ assets in private equity, real estate, public securities and multi-strategies portfolio via Gopher, Noah’s asset management subsidiary.

To improve operational efficiency and client experience, Noah started its digital transformation early on, systematically upgrading the firm’s technology infrastructure to precisely label and match clients, products and relationship managers. Based on this development, the firm launched the Noah Triangle service model in 2021, surrounding each client with an account representative, a number of solution representatives and a fulfilment representative, which is a relatively junior RM that attends to day-to-day inquiries of the client. This model not only improves the client experience but also allows emerging RM talents to work side by side with an experienced partner in catering to real clients needs.

As a leading wealth manager with a vision to build a successful and sustainable business in Asia’s fastest-growing market, Noah Holdings is Asian Private Banker’s Best Independent Wealth Manager – China for 2021.