Winners rationale

The Asia Pacific has always been a vibrant region for wealth management with countries at different economic development phases, each growing at a different pace. In-depth knowledge around clients’ product appetite, regulatory development as well as the local business environment is essential to establish a successful wealth management business model that speaks to HNW clients in the target markets.

After rushing into digitalisation in 2020, multiple private banks began to establish and expand onshore wealth management offerings in APAC over the past year since stringent quarantine and travel restrictions imposed by various authorities began to take a toll on relationships between onshore clients and offshore bankers.

Credit Suisse has long recognised the need to be the pioneer in digital banking offerings and to grow its onshore presence even before the global pandemic outbreak. Such vision allows the bank to harvest significant top and bottom-line growth in APAC, with a substantial amount of revenue generated from the HNW segment, despite facing investment headwinds in multiple markets over the past 12 months.

The Swiss bank entered the wealth management sector in Korea in partnership with a local player and opened an onshore office in Thailand in 2016. The firm onboarded a number of senior talents for its onshore India business and continued to prepare talents and infrastructure needed to bring its wealth management business into onshore China.

A well planned and executed onshoring exercise is crucial to HNW business as it opens doors for the private bank to meet new clients at the earlier stage of wealth creation. The bank’s perseverance has been rewarded with an accelerating growth on the bank’s share of onshore AUM over the past few years.

Credit Suisse demonstrated a systematic business approach in segmenting and tallying the number of HNW clients in the region and identifying this group as the core segment of growth. In addition to RMs, HNW clients are mostly positioned to serve by the bank’s state-of-the-art digital services with select access to investment and product specialists. In terms of product access, HNW clients can access most offerings of the firm — including bespoke financing, advisory and discretionary mandates, as well as wealth planning services.

With a clearly identified business strategy, an ambitious onshoring plan and pioneering digital banking offering, the judging panel is convinced that Credit Suisse is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Asia Pacific HNW for 2021.