In 2018, bumpy global markets and the resultant downturn in transactional income created a space in which private banks could truly showcase their advisory capabilities. While some met the basic prerequisite of generating consistent returns for clients, others went a step further to widen their securities coverage, source exclusive opportunities, and optimise their solutions.

Few in the industry upgraded their offering to the same magnitude as BNP Paribas Wealth Management, which used 2018’s challenges to demonstrate the all-round quality of its advisory proposition.

For the region, the bank more than doubled its coverage of Hong Kong and China stocks (including A-shares), nearly quintupled the size of its ETF offering, and introduced 19 new pay-off structures and 14 new relationships with counterparties, brokers, and research firms on its structured product platform. For more unique transactions, it delivered landmark deals across strategic equity, block trades, securities lending, and placements for cornerstone investors, while continuing to offer differentiated alternatives solutions, including European real estate services for Hong Kong clients.

The French bank also rolled out numerous functions last year to streamline trade execution. For flow trades, BNP Paribas introduced its proprietary FX pricing and execution platform, Cortex FX, to selected relationship managers and launched the structured product platform, Contineo, to its investment counsellors for more efficient order delivery. Digitally savvy end-clients, meanwhile, have been given the ability to directly trade equities through the private bank’s digital banking platform, myWealth, and fixed income advice and execution has been extended to clients under its direct access coverage desk.

Of course, an enhanced platform and offering means little without sound performance. In a challenging year, the bank delivered accurate calls, including emerging market downgrades that avoided more than 10% losses in India and Philippines equities and long-dated overweight to developed markets like Japan equities, which have rallied by 50% since the bank’s upgrade.

Testament to the amount of confidence placed in BNP Paribas, more than one-third of its clients followed all of its recommendations last year, up from 20% in 2017, leading to an uptick in transactional volumes.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Investment Advisory for 2018.