One of the big private banks in Singapore is making a raft of changes to its global market heads to deal with current and future growth, this publication can reveal.

Bank of Singapore has made a raft of senior managerial changes affecting roles of global markets heads, WealthBriefingAsia can exclusively report today. 

Sermon Kwan, who has managed two roles – chief executive of BoS’s Hong Kong branch and that of global market head for Greater China, will from January 2018 focus on his Hong Kong CEO role.

Rapid expansion of its Greater China business, and the “stellar” work of Kwan and his colleagues, it was necessary to change his roles, Bahren Shaari, CEO of Bank of Singapore, said in an emailed statement.  “Identified as a core growth engine for our parent company, OCBC Bank, and Bank of Singapore, the Greater China region is poised to drive 60 per cent of wealth generation in Asia-Pacific by 2020,” he said. 

Kwan will pass the responsibilities of the global market head for Greater China to Derrick Tan, currently the bank’s GM head for Malaysia, Brunei, Japan, Sub-Continent and Middle East.

“Our Greater China business has expanded significantly - by close to two times in AuM - in the last three years,” Shaari said. “Without which [Kwan and colleagues], we would not be where we are today in this region,” he continued. “Given the expanded scale of our business in Greater China today, it is necessary for us to dedicate more strategic resources to position ourselves to be able to capture further market share in this key region.”

Tan will be responsible for driving the bank’s growth in Greater China, as well as for expanding its presence through collaborative partners OCBC Wing Hang and Bank of Ningbo. Tan will also be the GM head of Japan.

Vikram Malhotra will be the global market Head responsible building growth in Sub Continent, Middle East and North Africa out of Singapore and Dubai.

Olivier Denis will cover the Malaysia market, in addition to the markets that he is currently responsible for - Singapore and International.

Robin Heng will be GM head of Thai and IndoChina, in addition to Indonesia and Philippines, as well as Core Wealth Segment, the bank said. 

"Since our inception in 2010, Bank of Singapore has grown exponentially in scale and in scope. In the last three years (2014 – 2016), we registered the highest compounded annual growth rate amongst the private banks in Asia. This momentum continued in Q1 2017 when our assets under management (AUM) grew to $85 billion, 49 per cent higher than in 2016. Today, we are ranked amongst the top 8 private banks in Asia,” Shaari said. 

“Given the scale of our business today, it is necessary for us to implement strategic organisational changes to keep us agile and relevant to grow further in our core markets. These strategic changes in the responsibilities of our Global Market Heads, taking effect in January 2018, will sharpen our growth focus by regions,” Shaari added. 

This publication had also heard of the changes via industry sources.

Last year, OCBC, parent firm of BoS, bought the Asia-based private banking operations of UK-listed Barclays.