Strategy
Bank Of Singapore's Family Office Business Push

The move will put the bank up against a number of large institutions which see family offices and external asset managers as important sources of business, providing them with the kind of services too expensive to supply in-house.
Bank of
Singapore intends to fight for a larger share of family
office business by expanding its investment products and
targeting clients outside the region, its chief executive said
late last week. Such a step will pit the bank against the likes
of UBS, Credit Suisse, Citi Private Bank and local names such as
DBS.
“The family office is a big segment, not only from China but also
from the Middle East as well as other parts of the world,” Bahren
Shaari told Reuters in an interview. The bank confirmed
the details of the report to WealthBriefingAsia on
Friday.
BoS, part of OCBC, is going after ultra-high net worth wealth at
a time when other lenders are also looking at the sector, to
provide a range of services from custody to outsourced chief
investment office functions. Asia-Pacific’s first-generation
entrepreneurs are starting to build dynasties and thinking of how
to protect what they have created. The region’s family offices
market is relatively young compared with that of North America
and Western Europe.
As the newswire story noted, BoS wants to regain AuM after assets
slipped to $104 billion in the year to March from $108 billion a
year ago due to the market downturn. However, assets of the
segment catering for family offices rose by 20 per cent.
“There is wealth transfer happening between the first generation
to the next generation. Managing money in the past was a
part-time business, now it’s a full-time business,” Bahren was
quoted as saying.
“There is a big interest in private markets. We make sure we have
a complete offering on hedge funds, private equity, direct
investments and real estate. That has grown quite a fair bit over
the last one year.”
Bank of Singapore is also evaluating setting up an onshore
presence in China at a time when Beijing’s crackdown on shadow
banking is pushing investors to the mainstream wealth management
business, the report said. “We look at the opportunities. Of
course, there’s an urgency to really look at what we can do
onshore,” he said.