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?

2024 was a dynamic year marked by heightened volatility across asset classes and geopolitical impacts, and private banks needed to be nimble to ensure they were delivering the right advice and positioning client portfolios appropriately from a risk and opportunity perspective.

We aim to be ahead of the curve in anticipating these themes and spend significant time educating clients and guiding them to be disciplined in their portfolio allocations. As a result, we were able to attract decent net new flows and grow our client base and revenues.

With similar themes continuing to be relevant into 2025, we believe diversification remains key. Our focus is to continue to work on a deeper penetration of our unique investment offering across private and public markets. Broadly, we look to continue supporting our clients with our key strengths in differentiated offerings, leveraging the broad resources of our corporate and investment bank, and delivering our focus on sustainable and impact investing.

Lastly, we intend to spend significant time in 2025 on the build out of our Singapore booking centre and enhancing the investment proposition for our Indian and Global Indians business to position ourselves for continued success in the region.

Q2: With wealth clients being increasingly sophisticated, tech-savvy, and time-conscious, they are demanding more expertise and capabilities when it comes to discretionary portfolio management offerings. How is this reflected in your long-term approach to DPM in Asia and efforts to deepen client penetration of these solutions?

At Barclays, we truly believe DPM should form the core of our clients’ investments and have built an offering which is best-in-class and globally awarded across single-line, fixed income and multi-assets. Across Asia, we have bolstered our DPM capabilities by hiring specialist managers across Singapore and India which will further enhance our investment capabilities in the region, and allow us to launch new capabilities focused on emerging markets and Asia in the coming months.

As the region continues to see strong wealth accumulation and inter-generational wealth transfers, we expect demand for DPM to grow and we want to be well-positioned to journey with our clients by offering them relevant investment strategies as well as bespoke solutions most suited to their needs. Strengthening our local team presence, will help give clients direct access to portfolio managers as well as build trust through deep client engagements in the long term.

Q3: 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?

According to McKinsey, between 2023 and 2030, ultra high net worth (UHNW) and high net worth (HNW) families in Asia Pacific are set to experience an intergenerational wealth transfer estimated at US$5.8 trillion. UHNW families are expected to account for about 60% of the total wealth transfer, and many are setting up family offices to facilitate the process. Over the years, Asia has seen a steady increase in the number of family offices and next generations, thanks to the rapid growth of private wealth in the region. The number of single-family offices in Hong Kong and Singapore has quadrupled since 2020 to about 4,000 across both jurisdictions.

One of our key strengths globally is our differentiated wealth planning and advisory proposition. Globally, we have a long-standing established presence and a history of serving multiple generations of clients by leveraging our key strengths locally where we have a presence and also in utilising our global reach to provide investment and wealth planning solutions. We do significant thought leadership outreach in this and are recognised for our in-depth solutions capability and connectivity across providers. Separately, we also run a Global Next Generation Forum which we currently host across the UK, Europe & ME, and look to bring to Asia in 2025.

Lastly, given our focus on global family offices, we continue to leverage and work closely with our investment bank to provide a strong integrated offering to meet their varied needs. This is a key area of focus for us in the region and we will continue to build out our capabilities in this segment.