Greetings,
It’s mid-year results season, so I will take this opportunity to vent my frustration at the lack of granularity in many banks’ financial statements when it comes to their regional private banking businesses. Clearly I’m a proponent of full disclosure and I think it is fair to say that only a few banks at best come close to offering near-complete transparency.
Credit Suisse APAC, for example, typically provides PB-specific top and bottom line figures, including a fairly decent breakdown of revenues and expenses, AUM and margins on client assets (net and gross), NNA flows, RM numbers and even a C/I ratio for its WM & Connected segment.
UBS is less transparent at the regional level, although it does disclose NNM and growth, invested assets (rounded to the nearest billion) and CA numbers, alongside ultra and global family office-specific figures. Everything else is reported at the business segment level.
Beyond these two (and maybe a couple of others), the level of transparency drops markedly.
Take Julius Baer, a bank that considers Asia its “second home market”. Its latest earnings release barely scratches the surface when it comes to Asia. What we get is an anecdotal nod towards the region (e.g. “particularly strong net inflows from Asia”) and a little added colour from the earnings call. Key figures for Bank of Singapore – part of OCBC Group and a major regional player – are generally clubbed together with global consumer/wealth management. Only AUM are disclosed in the published results. And over at BNP Paribas, which reports today, Asia-specific details for its wealth management business are even thinner.
Now, I’m singling out these banks only because they underline my point, which is this: for an industry that places so much optical importance on Asian wealth management, few banks seem prepared to back up their talk by showing their hand. I truly hope this changes.
Your Top Eight follows.
Cheers,
Sebastian Enberg
Editor
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“Only larger banks” can provide comprehensive DPM solutions for Asia’s ultra-rich
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Noah’s S&P rating a step forward for Chinese WM industry, says Lam
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TECHNOLOGY | EXCLUSIVE 21 July 2017
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REGULATIONS | EXCLUSIVE 27 July 2017
HKMA to align its rules with SFC’s manager-in-charge programme, lawyers say
In a move that would level the playing field for banks in the city, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is said to be updating the Banking Ordinance so that its requirements are aligned with the Securities and Futures Commission’s (SFC) manager-in-charge (MIC) programme.
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UBS WM names new Hong Kong-based head of innovation tech
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