The exponential growth of personal wealth across China has led to an unprecedented surge for private banking services.
China is now the world's second-largest wealth management market, bringing both opportunities and challenges for private banking business, the China Daily reports.
According to an article released by PY Standard, a financial planning data provider, 22 commercial banks provided private banking business in China at the end of 2016.
In a recent interview with «Bloomberg Television» China Merchants Bank Vice President Liu Jianjun, spoke of his ambition to make his bank the largest private bank in Asia.
Demand Outstrips Supply
With the demand for customized products and services to high net worth clients showing no signs of letting up, the domestic private banking sector is struggling to keep up and supply locally trained talent. Hence the international banks with their more sophisticated offering and global networks, are still winning business.
Chinese banks though have also been forging an offshore path and expect to retain the loyalty of their domestic clients as they invest and move assets offshore, as finews.asia recently reported.
Market Leaders
Of those, three banks' assets under management exceeded 1 trillion yuan – China Merchants Bank, with total assets under management of 1.6 trillion yuan, ranked first, which was followed by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1.2 trillion yuan) and Bank of China (1 trillion yuan).
Last year, the number of domestic private banking clients totaled 570,000. Bank of China had the largest amount of private banking clients (95,000), and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, followed by Agricultural Bank of China, ranked second and third respectively.
