Q1: Private banks in Asia have faced a number of challenges in 2024, from uncertainty around interest rate cuts in the US to volatile markets and geopolitical tensions. Considering this background, how did you safeguard AUM and revenue streams in 2024, while also attracting net new assets? What will your strategy be in 2025?

Bank of Singapore continued to see positive growth in fresh funds and inflows from new clients in 2024. Together with OCBC, the group wealth management AUM saw 5% growth year-on-year to S$284 billion as of end September 2024. This can be attributed to our relentless focus on executing our transformation strategy to meet our ambition of becoming Asia’s top private bank in the next three to five years.

We rolled out an alternative investment digital platform, FIM Alternatives Select (FIMAS), for our independent asset manager (IAM) partners – one of our fastest-growing business areas. FIMAS currently offers close to 30 funds from renowned global asset managers and expands the IAMs’ access to global alternative investment opportunities.

We launched the CIO Global Advisory Council, comprising experts from leading think tanks and asset managers around the world to augment the bank’s research capabilities and sharpen our intellectual capital. We also appointed a chief portfolio strategist to solidify our focus on cross-asset research, asset allocation and portfolio management.

Another area we have worked on is to collaborate more closely and systematically with our parent company, OCBC. OCBC’s corporate lending and treasury capabilities can meet our clients’ business needs. Across the group, we offer an entire continuum of wealth services, from a basic level to global investment requirements, to meet clients’ needs as their wealth grows.

To deliver on these fronts, we have been aggressively hiring across both frontline and support areas. These include making strategic senior appointments such as Rickie Chan, head of private banking for Greater China, and chief executive of our Hong Kong branch. Leveraging our deep leadership bench strength, we have appointed Rodney Sin, formerly our co-head of private banking for Singapore, to the newly introduced role of vice-chair, global client engagement, to strengthen our capabilities in serving the ultra high net worth segment. We have also promoted five colleagues to a new leadership tier of market group heads, which will enable us to sharpen our strategy in the core markets.

We will continue to double down on key business priorities to meet our ambition.

Q2: How are you advising clients in terms of investment opportunities in 2025? Which markets and asset classes will provide the best opportunities? And how can clients balance leveraging these opportunities while managing risks to their portfolios?

Our investment recommendations are anchored in the view that 2025 will be a year of profound changes for the global investment and geopolitical landscape, which portend heightened volatility as well as significant opportunities for investors adopting a nimble and risk-conscious approach to markets.

On balance, we expect the incoming US administration to be broadly supportive of US economic growth, equities and the USD, but with likely headwinds for duration risk and fixed income assets. President Trump’s policy focus on trade and immigration however could drive inflation higher. This dynamic would constrain the Federal Reserve’s ability to continue cutting rates later in the year, potentially leading to a further rise in 10-year yields. We continue to see a role for gold in portfolios as a hedge against risks of resurgent inflation and concerns of fiscal sustainability. Alternatives should take on a renewed focus for investors as we enter the new macro regime, and segments like private equity could benefit from easing headwinds, particularly, in the US.

As investors confront an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, the diversified multi-asset investment approach becomes indispensable. Diversifying across asset classes generates more consistent investment performance across economic regimes, reducing the risks associated with investment decisions based on unpredictable macroeconomic outcomes.

Our goal, as always, is to help clients navigate 2025 with confidence, capitalising on growth opportunities in technology and global change, while safeguarding long-term portfolio resilience through our thought leadership in long-term trends and asset allocation.

Q3: Much hype has been made about the transformative potential of artificial intelligence. What opportunities does AI present to your financial institution, and how does it fit into a broader strategy of technological upgrade and digitisation?

Bank of Singapore was established a little more than a decade ago and has grown significantly since. To scale the business for our next phase of growth, we are investing in technology, enhancing our platforms and our processes to serve our clients better. AI is an essential part of our broader technology strategy, which is a key enabler to help us achieve our goals, especially in improving client and employee experience.

We have recently launched a new generative AI tool for relationship managers (RMs). The tool provides RMs with a robust, real-time overview of the latest investment insights, taken from research content produced by our chief investment office. RMs save about 15-20 minutes a day on average and can engage clients with more timely investment analyses and insights.

We also launched the Client 360 dashboard for RMs, which provides them with AI-driven product and solution ideas and recommendations based on their clients’ profiles. This is in addition to a consolidated view of clients’ personal and investment portfolio details and one-click access to actionable prompts such as product expiries. This helps RMs keep track of client-related administrative tasks in a timely manner and enables them to have more personalised conversations with clients.

Even as we ramp up our digitalisation efforts, we firmly believe that to maintain our competitive edge, we have to combine our technical capabilities and knowledge with the human touch and our people’s intellectual capital and expertise.

Q4: Trillions of dollars of wealth are expected to be passed down to the next generation of clients in Asia over the coming years, bringing into the spotlight services targeted at next-generation clients. What is your bank doing to ensure it captures the full potential of this opportunity, whether via content, outreach, or solutions like family office and wealth planning?

We have observed that the wealth transfer to the next generation is indeed of increasing interest and priority among our UHNW clients and families. Asian families recognise the benefits of succession planning and tend to see wealth transfer as a means of preserving family harmony and unity. Our focus on the next generation is part of our commitment to address clients’ longer-term needs holistically, from professionalising the management of the family’s wealth to intergenerational wealth transfer, family governance and philanthropic giving.

In fact, our brand campaign this year reflects this very proposition – Bank of Singapore is here to serve not only the parents but every generation. We share the same values embraced by our clients: the importance of family and the desire to build and sustain a legacy that endures for generations.

Bank of Singapore’s next-generation programme is developed around three key propositions: Education, Investments and Community. Since 2012, we have held about 15 next-generation events, attended by close to 500 clients.

This year, we launched a new educational programme “Future Wealth Executive Programme” (FWEP), in partnership with two prestigious universities in Singapore and China – Singapore Management University and Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. The FWEP aims to provide the next generation with a strong foundation to prepare them for wealth transfer. Thirty participants attended the programme, where they could network and attend educational and investment talks on topics such as wealth and business succession planning, family offices, entrepreneurship and private equity. For the Tsinghua segment held in China, participants learnt about China’s political and macroeconomic landscape, including business and investment opportunities.

In 2025, we are preparing to launch a suite of events anchored on education, investment and networking on topics catered to the interests and aspirations of the next generation, such as generative AI and digitalisation.