Singapore is Asia’s leading private banking hub – and at the heart of that story is DBS, a bank that has remade itself over the past decade and a half into one of the world’s best wealth managers.
DBS wins this award for many reasons. For one thing, in a year where many private banks suffered an outflow of client capital, the firm saw net new money double in 2022, hitting a record S$24 billion ($17.8 billion). Assets under management inched up 3% year on year in 2022, to $224 billion, with wealth management pre-tax profit jumping 40% to $2.03 billion. In the five years to the end of 2022, DBS has more than doubled the share of recurring fees to 25% of total fee income.
A good measure of that new money came from existing clients in the region, but a sizeable chunk came from new regional as well as global customers. International clients account for 76% of the private bank’s growth over the past two years, further proof of Singapore’s increasing allure to high net-worth customers in south and east Asia, as well as the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.
DBS is a beneficiary of Singapore’s good planning over the past several decades. The city state is a natural destination for wealthy customers, particularly those in markets – including many in the West – showing signs of wear and tear. Many new customers view DBS as the embodiment of local commercial banking strength and trust it with their money.
Not so long ago, the family office structure was a rarity in Asia. Now, every wealthy family seems to want one – and DBS reckons it has onboarded more than a third of the family offices that have set up shop in Singapore in recent years. It is also the first bank in the world to launch a multi-family office that leverages Singapore’s VCC structure. This offers a more convenient way for families to manage their wealth without having to set up their own family office in Singapore.
DBS continues to find ways to trim expenses – its cost-to-income ratio was 46% at the end of 2022, against 70%-plus at most big private banks. And by tracking what content customers view and engage with, as well as transaction history, DBS generates ‘prompts’ that cater to the needs of individual clients by offering them research and investment ideas related to what they are interested in.
Last year, our system delivered some 1.4 million prompts to clients and relationship managers, yielding some remarkable results
Joseph Poon
“That enables our client advisers to be comprehensively prepped for any conversation they have with their clients,” says Joseph Poon, group head of DBS Private Bank. “Last year, our system delivered some 1.4 million prompts to clients and relationship managers, yielding some remarkable results. Most prompts delivered to clients and relationship managers are symbiotic. They lead to highly nuanced follow-up discussions as clients feel comfortable in taking action based on insights on their specific portfolio.”
The bank’s longstanding push into the environmental, social and governance space continues to bear fruit for its private banking team. More than 60% of its clients’ investment assets are now comprised of sustainable securities and assets.
It continues to do good work in other ways. In March 2023, DBS and Heritas Capital, a Singapore investment firm, announced the first close of the Asia Impact First Fund, which supports innovative and high-growth social enterprises in their sustainability journey. DBS has committed to half of the fund’s $20 million, with capital also coming from many of its leading family office clients.
