Getting Back to Basics: Asia’s Private Bankers Rebuild Relationships for Recovery

For Asia’s leading private bankers, a slowdown in business caused by the shrinking overall wealth of clients in the region, wilting confidence in capital markets and other investment products, and an intensifying lack of trust in financial institutions at large, has not dissuaded them from seeking ways to reassure their clients that instruments still exist which can make them money. In March 2009, 300 Asia business heads, team leads and relationship managers with assets under management (AUM) of over US$100 million shared their views about the impact that the declining economic environment has had on their business in a survey conducted by Korn/Ferry. Recovery, changing client requirements and a race to upgrade talent were top of the agenda at an intimate roundtable discussion of business and HR heads of some of the companies polled in the survey that was subsequently held in Hong Kong.