Bank of Singapore’s investment advisory unit reported a 40% revenue surge last year, driven by a pivot into AI-themed structured products, gold momentum and a timely bet on Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds.

“The first month of this year has been fantastic, and we are also investing a lot into our processes and products. We can see those investments are paying off. I’m very optimistic,” said James Chye, head of investment advisory solutions at Bank of Singapore.

While favourable market conditions provided a strong tailwind, the bank’s performance, in Chye’s view, is rooted in a set-up designed to capture these opportunities. He shared with Asian Private Banker that the bank’s investment advisory value proposition is built on four pillars: holistic advice, fast and sharp pricing, relevance, and accessibility. 

“You can have the best advice, but there’s no point and it’s just theoretical if you can’t bring that product to market and execute it fast enough, as capital markets are so fast-moving,” Chye said.

The bank has forged a long-standing partnership with technology solution providers that has allowed it to co-develop a proprietary workflow specifically engineered for the high-volume, fast-paced demands of the Asian private banking market, according to Chye.

Unlike traditional platforms that require advisors to request quotes individually, the bank built its system for scale. “It’s important that we have the sharpest pricing, and we are fast,” Chye said.

Beyond technical execution, clients prioritise relevance — the ability of a product to solve specific problems as market conditions shift. Chye said the bank addresses this by providing “holistic, timely, and portfolio-centric” advice to ensure every solution aligns with the client’s broader investment strategy.

“Clients today want to trade around the clock, especially as the US markets become more and more popular. A lot of the precious metals and FX markets trade 24 hours, so we are open whenever the markets are open, and we enable round-the-clock trading,” Chye told APB.

Market themes

Reflecting on 2025, Chye identified three pivotal market themes that fueled the bank’s business momentum: artificial intelligence, de-dollarisation, and rate uncertainty. These pillars continue to drive the bank’s current growth and remain at the core of its advisory strategy.

The AI revolution sparked significant activity in structured products and equities across the technology supply chain. “AI has been the strongest trend that has driven client interests and trading volumes over the last year. They have traded all types of products in it. The two main drivers would be an accumulator and fixed coupon notes,” he said.

In the AI investing space, Bank of Singapore also introduced a market-neutral structured note that allows clients to monetise volatility and dispersion within a stock basket, rather than betting on the market’s absolute direction.

Recent results have validated this approach. In one specific basket, the top-performing stock surged by over 300%, while the weakest performer saw only single-digit growth. This massive 290%+ performance gap resulted in double-digit returns for clients, Chye shared.

The de-dollarisation trend and a weaker USD, on the other hand, catalysed record interest in FX and precious metals, particularly gold. 

“This is an important theme that cuts through the whole of last year. Where there is a trend, clients tend to be able to take positions and then benefit from it. From our perspective, we expect the dollar to continue its weakness, but in a more moderate fashion,” Chye said. He added that in January this year, the bank’s precious metals revenue increased by 350% year-on-year.

The persistent interest rate uncertainty, fueled by leadership transitions at the Fed, prompted clients to proactively lock in yields, according to Chye.

With the expectation that rates would eventually decline, the challenge was finding the right way to play that move. Chye said Bank of Singapore identified Additional Tier 1 bonds (AT1s) as a high-conviction opportunity early last year. “We caught the point where we were relatively comfortable with its standing in the financial market. It also captured a very decent yield for our clients,” he said.

Unified toolkit

Capital market instruments play a crucial role within the bank’s cohesive whole portfolio advisory framework. They, along with other products, serve as different delivery mechanisms for targeted exposure.

In one of examples, Chye shared that if a client’s asset allocation calls for a specific percentage in equities, the bank looks at the most efficient way to fill that bucket using a mix of direct equities and ETFs for core market access, actively managed funds to capture alpha, and equity-linked structured products to provide specific payoff profiles or downside protection.

By treating these as a unified toolkit rather than separate silos, the bank ensures the client’s portfolio remains diversified, according to Chye.

Meanwhile, the bank’s structured products desk operates as a cross-asset team, specifically designed to manage the diverse range of underlyings that these products can reference. “The domain expert and the structured products team will work together to originate the product, craft the investment narrative, and work together to get it traded for the client,” Chye told APB.

Diverse demands

The Singapore-based bank serves a wide spectrum of clients, including U/HNW, family offices, and financial intermediaries. While they have overlapping demands, Chye highlighted the distinctive requirements.

For the HNW segment, the bank focuses on thematic investing and product depth, whereas for UHNW clients, it offers bespoke customisation on top of its complete product shelf. Chye explained that this is to help clients hedge or enhance specific existing positions.

In addition, the bank also enhanced its platform to meet the unique operational requirements of financial intermediaries (FIM) for capital market services.

Unlike a standard HNW who trades with a single account, an intermediary often manages a diverse group of end-clients. Chye said the bank’s infrastructure is built to handle bulk execution across multiple accounts simultaneously. This allows a FIM to place a single order that is then seamlessly allocated across its entire client base. 

“We have really thought very hard about how to service this segment of clients, and invested in the tech to do it,” Chye said.