Australian bank ANZ swooped on
RBS’s former private banking businesses in Asia and has launched an
affluent platform to target clients with more than $100,000 in
assets. ANZ Asia-Pacific managing director for retail banking
and wealth Wendy Lim outlines what she calls the bank’s return
to the ‘old-fashioned’ banker concept.
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By GlobalData
ANZ’s acquisition of selected Royal Bank of Scotland
(RBS) private banking businesses across Asia-Pacific cemented its
foothold in six of the region’s developed and developing wealth
markets.
It now has a stronger presence in
Indonesia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and
Vietnam.
Signature banking
boost
The introduction of its Signature
Priority Banking to serve affluent banking clients in four of these
key markets is its latest initiatives to target private banking,
affluent and emerging affluent segments.
Numerous banks have rolled out
affluent banking platforms in the past five years, including: HSBC,
with HSBC Premier; Standard Chartered, with Priority Banking; and
Citi, with Citigold.
ANZ has been part of this trend
since 2007 and sees the high-margin affluent and emerging affluent
segment as a key focus in its private bank expansion. The challenge
for ANZ is how its offering will differentiate itself in Asia’s
highly competitive wealth market.
PBI: Where are your
key wealth management markets?
Lim: For ANZ in
Asia-Pacific, the key markets for wealth management are Singapore
and Hong Kong. In these countries there is a strong demand from
customers for sophisticated and affluent banking services, and
these customers are also interested in offshore banking.
PBI: Can you explain
the split between the wealth management and private banking
business? How are your customers segmented?
Lim: Through ANZ’s
Retail Banking & Wealth Management business in Asia-Pacific we
bank affluent customers with more than $100,000 in assets under
management (AuM) and emerging affluent customers with more than
$50,000 in AuM.
ANZ Private Bank offers clients a
wide range of deposit, loan and wealth management products and
services, catering for the needs of clients with AuM above $1m.
PBI: ANZ’s latest
investor briefing mentioned that your core focus is on affluent and
emerging affluent segments. How are you targeting these
clients?
Lim: We recently
launched our Signature Priority Banking, which is a specialist
service for affluent retail customers in Asia-Pacific. Our
relationship managers take their time to get to know our clients’
individual financial needs.
Behind our relationship managers is
a support network, trainers and product specialists dedicated to
devising individualised wealth management plans for our clients. We
have launched ANZ Signature Priority Banking in Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Singapore and Indonesia as part of the completion of the
acquisition of RBS businesses.
Signature Priority Banking is
offered to individual clients with the equivalent of $100,000 in
AuM in developed markets like Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and
the equivalent of $50,000 in developing markets like Indonesia,
Vietnam and China.
We will roll out Signature Priority
Banking in the other Asia-Pacific markets progressively over the
next 18 months.
PBI: What makes your
Signature Priority Banking platform any different from your
competitors?
Lim: The essence
of ANZ Signature Priority Banking is that each of us has a unique
signature. This signature is a personal trademark that represents
our personality and individuality – concepts that represent the
heart of ANZ Signature Priority Banking.
We will take the time to understand
each customer as an individual with unique dreams and aspirations
and deliver a ‘holistic’ banking experience. Essentially, we’re
bringing back the ‘old-fashioned’ banker concept.
Over the coming months we will also
launch Signature Priority Banking in China, where our branches have
already been fitted-out to Signature standards, and in Vietnam. We
plan to roll-out Signature Priority Banking in other markets over
the next 18 months, including in some of our Pacific countries.
PBI: What investment
products are clients interested in? Is there an appetite for more
complex investment products, or is it more traditional asset
classes?
Lim: In general
what we see is that customers have a strong appetite for three
types of products – savings, investments and protection.
Within their investment portfolio,
customers often have different “pots of money”, – for example, one
with a longer-term horizon to secure financial freedom during
retirement, and a medium-term “pot” for their children’s higher
education, for example.
As a result of the recent financial crisis, clients are
demanding simpler products that give them greater transparency and
understanding of what they are investing in. Risk appetite has also
increased over the past year and we are now seeing individual
investors returning to the equities market.
