Bank of Singapore’s global head of products, Marc Van de Walle, shares with finews.asia about the growing demand for advisory mandates in an increasingly uncertain economic and geopolitical environment.
Rising volatility is driving higher cash allocations and in many cases an even more hands-on approach with Asia’s notoriously self-directed investors. Private banks that are overdependent on revenue from management fees, be it funds or discretionary mandates, may struggle to achieve meaningful growth or retain assets.
Despite the Asia client market’s traditional reluctance against fee-for-advice models, Bank of Singapore has observed increasing demand for its active advisory mandates, especially from large private clients.
«Our advisory mandate offerings are an important highlight for this year,» Van de Walle shared. «Although it has started from a low base, we have seen strong growth since we launched it around three years ago. Many of these are sizeable mandates with sophisticated, high-touch needs such as access to specialized advisors. We are seeing this trend amongst family offices and UHNW clients who are increasingly willing to pay fees.»
Digital Advisory
Advisory mandates aside, the bank is actively enhancing its digital advisory capabilities to achieve scale to reach its broader client base. The area is one of two main technological foci for the bank and it continues to make incremental changes to further optimize user experience.
«Within digital advisory, we have developed several algorithms to deliver more targeted recommendations based on big data analysis,» Van de Walle said. «One key thing you want to avoid is to broadcast every single idea to every single client. You will drown them and [become] irrelevant. These are not revolutionary releases but rather small tweaks which we are working on all the time.»
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