Benjamin Cavalli, Credit Suisse's private banking head for Southeast Asia in Singapore and newly appointed in the additional role as CEO Singapore, spoke to finews.asia about the region's wealthy.
Benjamin «Ben» Cavalli has been the CEO for Symasia, Credit Suisse’s client philanthropy platform for more than three years, a role he is passing on to Young Jin Yee, Private Banking Market Group Head for Singapore, as finews.asia revealed earlier.
Ben Cavalli, in addition to your business leadership responsibilities, you have been the CEO for Symasia for over three years, and now passing the philanthropy baton to Young Jin Yee, what is Symasia exactly?
Symasia has been established six years ago and is a 100 percent subsidiary of Credit Suisse. It's an umbrella platform to enable clients to set up or manage their own personal or corporate foundations under Symasia.
How advanced is philanthropy in Asia?
Formal philanthropy, as the West understands it, is very young in Asia. It dates back perhaps one decade. Informal philanthropy, that is less organized and structured, has a much longer tradition, especially among Chinese communities. Unlike philanthropists in Europe or the U.S. who make philanthropic giving across the globe, Asian donors tend to prefer to engage in charitable giving closer to home.
How did Symasia get into the business?
When we began, the aim was to further understand our clients’ needs and deepen our relationship with them. When we first set up Symasia, we had around ten client foundations. Gradually, more and more clients and prospective clients say, well, we need that too.
«It is a donor-advised set-up, the only one managed by a bank in Asia»
It is an efficient, convenient but structured way to give back to society. We now have more than 30 client foundations under Symasia which have disbursed more than $40 million in grants to charitable organizations across Asia and globally.
What does the platform offer?
Many wealthy families already have their own foundations, but it might become expensive for them to manage them in the longer term. So you have to scale, and therefore families can come under the Symasia platform, where we offer them various services according to their needs, such as secretariat support, disbursing and monitoring grants and maintaining good record for all charitable gifts and projects. It is a donor-advised set-up, the only one managed by a bank in Asia. We give them the infrastructure – free of charge.
What are the expectations that clients have after having established a foundation?
Measuring and monitoring the impact. This has become absolutely crucial. Therefore we need to know much more and being accountable and direct our services in a way that the impact of a foundation is sustainable.
Impact investing seems to be the buzzword in the business now. What is it about?
Impact investing as a concept has been around for about ten years. Although venture capital and private equity funds structured to produce this kind of social-financial impact are proliferating, these vehicles remain rare in Asia, despite the vast need for social and environmental financing to address poverty, pollution and sustainable energy solutions.
«So we said, look, we cannot seriously recommend anything to our clients»
Clients at Credit Suisse approached us and said we want to have a clear definition of our input and a financial return that comes from the business model of which doing social good is an intrinsic part.
So, how did you create your impact investing offer?
As Credit Suisse began receiving more from questions from clients about impact investing opportunities in Asia, we started looking more closely for the right kind of investments. Although we saw a lot of fund managers that had started certain vehicles, we realized that there is little or almost no track record for delivering returns to investors, or they have not operated in Asia in cycles before.
So we said, look, we cannot seriously recommend anything to our clients. That is why we decided to create something on our own. Credit Suisse private banking in Asia Pacific joined forces with Singapore’s UOB Venture Management to launch a fund based on the original definition of what impact investing means when it was first coined by the Rockefeller Foundation around 2008, i.e. social good is an intrinsic part of the business model and investment that generates the financial return.
«Education is in the Asian mindset»
The more social good you do, the more financial return is generated, and the higher financial return results in more social good. It’s self-reinforcing. A first round of funding from this fund will support small- and medium-sized businesses across Southeast Asia and China whose business models address key social challenges with private sector solutions in areas like agriculture, healthcare or housing.
In Asia, philanthropy puts a big focus on education. Why is that so?
Education is in the Asian mindset. It is genuine, and many cultures in Asia see education as the only way to improve a person’s potential in life. And educational giving comes in many different forms. Building school, hardware, providing teachers, teaching teachers, giving scholarships. That offers plenty of opportunities.
As you pass on the baton, what do you see as the next steps to further develop SymAsia?
Generally clients have already a certain philanthropic project idea in mind and come to us. So we help to craft the right framework and sometimes support them in execution.
«Could you help me now to formulate the concept for a corporate foundation?»
What has started by individual clients setting up their own foundations, turns now more often to entrepreneurs and family-owned businesses setting up corporate foundations under Symasia.
Clients say, 'Credit Suisse has given me fantastic advice, could you help me now to formulate the concept for a corporate foundation to align our corporate philanthropy with our business focus?'. And quite often there is a plan to involve their own staff in these activities. This is an area we expect will grow in the future.
