Foreign banks to expand wealth management
Foreign banking giants including HSBC and DBS are gearing up to further tap the massive wealth management market in Asia, especially in China, by allocating more investment and hiring more professionals.
HSBC announced plans to invest over US$3.5 billion in the next five years to accelerate the growth of its wealth and personal banking business in Asia and drive its ambition to become the leading wealth bank in the region.
The bank aims to hire more than 5,000 staffers in the next five years, including relationship managers, investment counsellors and specialists, to support clients on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Singapore.
This includes plans to recruit up to 3,000 wealth planners to grow its new mobile wealth planning service on the mainland.
To date, the bank has over 200 new wealth planners in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
HSBC will also step up investment in technology to build digitally-enabled financial planning platforms for all its customers while delivering bespoke wealth products.
Greg Hingston, regional head of wealth and personal banking at the bank, said Asian wealth offers one of the most compelling growth opportunities today, adding that in the next five years, the bank plans to extend private banking on the Chinese mainland to 10 cities and more than double its Jade client base on the mainland and Singapore.
Asia generates nearly half of HSBC’s US$1.6 trillion wealth balances and 65 percent of the group’s wealth revenue.
DBS Bank (China) has launched a Consumer Banking Elite Program aimed at serving the fast-growing medium and high-end wealth management needs of the Chinese market by providing an across-the-board training program for those with one-year or less experience and creating consumer banking elites for China’s wealth market.
It will gather the elite management teams of DBS to provide these new recruits with one-on-one mentoring and put in place an all-round training program to share experience.
Ken Chew, head of consumer banking of DBS China, said training motivated and capable account managers and empowering them to provide client-centric wealth management services mattered a lot to China’s wealth management market.
