The Swiss bank poignantly chose Singapore rather than its home country in which to launch a new set of digital offerings for wealthy clients, in a move aimed at improving bankers' productivity and reach.

While some Western banks may have struggled to enjoy a boom in the Asian wealth management market as much as they might have hoped, firms still see huge potential upside in the number of clients that can be served in the region.

At Credit Suisse, the bank which last week announced its new digital private banking platform for Asia-Pacific clients, choosing Singapore as its first launch location, there is a belief that banks are still only scratching the surface of the market for wealthy persons in the region.

Francois Monnet, chief operating officer, private banking for Asia-Pacific at the bank, said there are an estimated 7 million millionaires in the region. On the assumption that a banker can on average handle 35 clients, that would translate into a need to have 200,000 private bankers. But at the moment there are only around 10,000 such people.

With that sort of disparity in mind, Monnet and his colleagues hope that by enhancing bankers’ productivity via new digital and related channels, some of that “gap” can be bridged. “This is a game-changer. We have empowered our clients to be better informed, anytime,” he told WealthBriefingAsia in an interview.

“You are a couple of clicks away for a relationship manager to engage more proactively with a client in a much more personalised way. It is relationship enhancing. It is not replacing RMs but augmenting them,” Monnet continued. “This [platform] addresses the issue of handling productivity and scale.”

Asked if the new platform could increase ratios of clients to RMs for certain types of client, he said yes. Alternatively, the technology enables an RM to handle the same number of clients as before but engage with them more fully in value-added areas. The platform frees up RMs from a great deal of compliance tasks and administrative work by automating certain parts of their role.

With banks such as Credit Suisse, UBS, DBS Group and Citi Private Bank embracing new forms of technology to drive client engagement – and banker productivity – the hard proof of these platforms’ value will be seen in whether firms increase their “share of wallet” in the region while protecting margins and driving sustainable revenues. Not all private banks have found Asia an easy hunting ground: Societe Generale, the French bank, sold its Asian private banking unit last year to DBS.

The rollout of the Credit Suisse platform comes at a time of continued technology ferment in the global banking and wealth management sector, with firms embracing mobile devices, apps and new communication channels to hook up advisors and clients.

MyPrivateBanking Research, the Swiss-based firm tracking such developments, argued in a report in early March that younger vendors are rolling out video communication tools that more strongly replicate in-person client meetings, for example, by providing share screens as well as ways to exchange messages and record meetings.

Global ambitions
The Credit Suisse Private Banking app follows the bank’s previously-stated commitment to expand its client-facing technology globally. In the first phase of the launch, the app will be available to iPad users, with access extended to other devices, including the Apple iPhone, web browsers, and those operating on Google Android. The firm said that new features and enhancements will be released in phases, including portfolio analysis, greater trading capabilities and alerts based on clients’ preferences.

The new platform has been developed by extensive testing with actual clients; it has been developed with the insights of clients. “It is now live in Singapore and it is getting very encouraging feedback,” Monnet continued.

He said three principles drove how the platform was designed: simplicity, relevance of insights and immediacy of information so that it makes the experience user-friendly and personal, both for the client and his or her advisor.

The user experience is “compelling”, he said, referring to the simplicity of the user experience and the suite of collaboration tools, such as instant messaging, audio and video call, screen and document sharing and document annotations.

After the launch in Singapore, the platform will be rolled out progressively to clients across the region.

Any launch in Hong Kong is subject to regulatory approvals, he said.

A key effort at Credit Suisse has been to modernise its overall service model so that the platform is integrated into the wider functions of the bank. The ability, for example, to trade securities/forex via the platform means that there has to be straight-through processing in the bank to make these trades happen efficiently, Monnet added.