The CEO of Switzerland's third-largest bank has laid out his firm's ambitions for Asia.

Asia will make up about a third of Julius Baer’s overall business in the next five years, its chief executive told Bloomberg Television in Singapore earlier this week. 

The bank’s hiring drive from last year is paying off in a “very big way,” Boris Collardi told the news service yesterday. Asia accounts for about 20 per cent to 25 per cent of its business, he said.

Julius Baer has in the past dubbed Asia its “second home market”. Along with rival Swiss houses UBS and Credit Suisse it has continued to drive into the Asia market, contrasting with the likes of European players such as ABN AMRO, Barclays and Societe Generale, which have spun off Asian private banking arms in recent years due to an inability to make sufficient profit in what can be an expensive market.

Asian inflows helped the bank boost net new money in the first six months of 2017 by 6 per cent on an annualized basis, in what Collardi has described as the firm’s “best half-year ever,” the news service said.

The bank’s cost-income ratio is higher in Asia - in the high 70s - but this isn’t a problem because revenue is rising, Collardi said. “It’s not something that is bothering us because revenue momentum is the most important thing and Asia has had record revenues in the first half,” he said.