Awards for Excellence 2018
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The momentum in UBS’s Apac wealth management business is such that senior staff envisage a day when assets in Asia overtake those from any other part of the world. It is easy to see why. In 2017 the bank became the first wealth manager to cross SFr300 billion ($305 billion) in assets in Asia and by the first quarter of 2018 was already at SFr379 billion. The bank may well have crossed SFr400 billion by the time you read this.
Achieving 28% year-on-year growth in invested assets is no mean feat in any circumstances; doing it off such a high, market-leading base is extraordinary. Yes, markets helped, but net new money for the year was SFr28.4 billion, up 37% year on year.
Although UBS runs the business out of Singapore, Greater China is where the growth is and the opportunity for international banks like UBS, as China’s domestic private banking industry deals with increased scrutiny of shadow banking products.
UBS has a few interesting local institutions here. Its UBS Securities business in Beijing, one of the few Sino-foreign securities joint ventures in which the foreigner has management control, provides a useful outlet for clients’ domestic capital markets needs; another joint venture with Qianhai Financial Holdings is designed to foster digital innovation in wealth management in China; and a well-established series of events attracts some of the brightest and wealthiest names in the country.
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| Martin Blessing |
Half the world’s billionaires bank with UBS, and more and more of them are young and Chinese; the bank has kept up with them by building events and connecting people in areas such as AI and blockchain. A new digital hub in Kowloon is proving useful.
It is a sign of confidence that UBS saw 40% year-on-year growth in 2017 on its Mandates platform for segregated accounts. This in turn reflects the success of the global chief investment office investment engine, which monitors 650,000 portfolios for risk around the world and runs 50,000 different simulations daily.
And, even more so than for rival Credit Suisse, one has the sense that wealth management at UBS matters above anything else at the bank. Martin Blessing and Tom Naratil are co-presidents of global wealth management of UBS.
