Search the results Domestic players have done well in maintaining their lead in the southern European high net-worth market. In Greece, Portugal, and Spain, for example, domestic banks continue to top Euromoney’s private banking poll. But international competitors are making strong inroads, particularly among wealthier clients; in Italy, JPMorgan has dethroned domestic leader UniCredit altogether.
Domestic players have a natural advantage in the less-developed private banking markets and among the lower ranks of the wealthy, who are an obvious target with great potential. “In Spain, about 75% of target private banking clients are still using only regular consumer banks and are not enjoying any private banking services,” says Luis Moreno, general manager at Banif, the top-ranked private bank in Spain. “This makes the Spanish market different from other countries where private banking is better understood. Most of our clients do not like to feel forced to have a separate banking relationship from their daily needs or their mortgage, they want a bank that can do all that for them plus offer more tailored services. This type of service is very capital intensive and difficult for foreign competitors to offer.”
The situation is similar in Portugal, where domestic champion Millennium BCP tops the poll for best private bank and fellow Portuguese bank Banco Espírito Santo comes second.
In Greece, where the private banking market is more developed, EFG Eurobank tops the poll for best private bank, but only one other domestic player, Alpha Bank, ranked sixth, features in the top 10. International private banks also dominate the poll for the very richest clients.
“We’re not like the domestic players, simply because we are not a local bank,” says Peter Charrington, managing director of private banking for Greece and the UK at Citigroup. “We can’t do the same volume of business, so we target people whose net worth is A10 million and higher. Our Greek clients have a very international outlook and turn to us for the type of investments that smaller banks just can’t offer. Our clients have been very keen on private equity opportunities in southeast Asia, China, India and eastern Europe and on structured notes that domestic competitors just can’t offer.”
Citigroup, which comes second in the poll for best private bank in Greece and first for ultra high net-worth individuals, is busy hiring more Greek bankers for its Athens office, where the bank says it is determined to be recognized as the number-one private bank.
In Italy, as in Greece, where the private banking market is sophisticated, international players are having disproportionate success because clients are often prepared to use different banks for different services, giving foreign banks more of a chance to win private banking business, even if they are not a customer’s principal relationship bank.
JPMorgan has supplanted UniCredit as the leading private bank in Italy this year and Citigroup is determined to make it to the top in Greece, but international private banks in the rest of southern Europe might find that they can only go as fast as their clients are willing to change.
