With office openings in Dubai, mainland China and Taipei, as well as a new alliance in Thailand and the appointment of prominent industry figures, WRISE is certainly going places. This publication recently met with the business in Singapore to take stock and explore its strategy.

It is not just ultra-high net worth clients who have more than one bank account but still need an advisor to make sense of it all. In a fast-growing wealth region such as Asia-Pacific, the ability to co-ordinate clients’ different financial relationships is particularly important. As one goes up the wealth spectrum, that capacity counts even more.

A notable characteristic of Asian high net worth individuals is their tendency to be multi-banked, maintaining relationships with several private banks to spread risks (mindful perhaps of bank failures), compare service offerings and get involved with opportunities across jurisdictions. There are times when no single bank has the ideal solution for a client, but a blend of different banks might work. Even for retail clients, having different banks – such as a traditional brick-and-mortar establishment plus fintech platforms such as Revolut and various payment apps – is the norm. 

For WRISE, simplifying complexity is an important reason for existing. Founded in 2022, WRISE is a wealth enterprise which aims to make it easier for ultra-high net worth individuals to grow, manage and protect their wealth. 

For years, UHNW individuals who rely on traditional banks for product ideas and suitability can lack transparency. WRISE has identified a gap in the market – providing independent advisory services that help mass affluent to ultra-high net worth individuals to manage their wealth.  

And that formula continues to propel rapid growth at WRISE, according to WRISE Private Singapore deputy CEO, Jude Lin (pictured below), in a recent interview with WealthBriefingAsia at the firm’s Singapore offices.

Jude Lin

“We are doing well and doing well in terms of managing our costs. We hope to do even better this year,” Lin said. 

WRISE has hired more than 400 people over the past four years, and the pace is continuing to be strong.

“With our hubs in Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, a client service centre in Taiwan and presence in Thailand, we continue our expansion into markets where clients seek independent advice,” he added.

In one of its most prominent moves, the firm appointed former VP Bank group CEO Paul Arni as non-executive director at WRISE Singapore in March 2025 to strengthen corporate governance and strategic growth.

In May last year, WRISE Hong Kong appointed Joe C Lee as non-executive director of WRISE Prestige Hong Kong. Lee serves as chairman of Renhe Holdings, chairman of Klover Insurtech, and is an advisor to many venture-backed startups. Elsewhere, late in 2025, WRISE appointed Darren Ng as group chief financial officer.

Other moves highlight a rapid growth path. In November 2023, the firm appointed Shigehiro Suzuki as market head of Japan. In January 2024, it opened an office in Dubai and in March 2025, it launched its Shenzhen office and its WRISE Academy in the Chinese city. Earlier this year, in February, WRISE Group officially opened its new client service centre in the Xinyi District of Taipei and in early March 2026, WRISE announced a strategic alliance with IFCG Public Company, a financial advisory and brokerage firm based in Thailand.

Handling clients' multi-banked arrangements remains important for WRISE. Asia’s multi-banking model has been a feature for some time. An Accenture report from January 2022, for example, said that “Asia’s affluent investors tend to be multi-banked and those investors who are satisfied with their advisory relationship hold a higher percentage of their wealth with their primary bank.” It went on to say that in an investor survey of that year, two out of five respondents said that they considered consolidating their wealth over the course of 2022. It is also said that many wealth managers assume that 60 to 80 per cent or more Asian high net worth and ultra-HNW clients are multi-banked. UHNW clients often have three to five+ banking relationships, for example. 

Technology has its place in handling these arrangements.

“While the industry faces significant headwinds regarding rising operational costs and regulatory complexity, we believe that the core challenge for wealth management today is integrating technology with the relationship-based nature of wealth advisory services,” Lin said. “In an era when many firms are racing toward total automation to solve onboarding speed or cost-efficiency, we want to ensure that technology enhances the human connection required for wealth management, rather than replacing it.”

Independence
“We want to be a firm of choice for clients if they want to be managed independently. They want geographic diversification across different banks…but they want a single trusted advisor,” Lin continued. “And we want to be an employer of choice for bankers who want to be in the independent space."
 
WRISE is also part of Asia’s external asset manager (EAM) ecosystem – about which we interviewed the firm a year ago. Founder and group executive chairman Derrick Tan has said that the EAM business is “essential” to WRISE Group's growth strategy. It contributes a significant sum to its revenue growth and its desire to reshape Asian wealth management. Lin said the EAM space is still growing, fuelled by a desire among bankers for independence, autonomy and to be closer to their clients.

Client approach
WRISE aims to go beyond traditional wealth management by building what it says is a 360-degree wealth ecosystem that unites advisory, capital markets, and technology-driven solutions to serve clients. Their three areas of business include WRISE Private – wealth management services for the UHNWIs, WRISE Prestige – the mass affluent segment, and WRISE Capital services providing corporate finance and financial advisory, M&A and restructuring activity.

Across its different businesses, WBA asked Lin whether WRISE had a rough notion of the ideal ratio of clients per advisor. There is no set ratio, but WRISE Private “maintains a ratio of one manager to approximately 20 accounts – each to be able to provide a bespoke service.”

Technology
WRISE, along with other wealth firms, is feeling the impact of technologies such as AI. That said, Lin was emphatic that the human element is central.

“In high-stakes investments, clients want to hear from experienced RMs about why they come to a conclusion,” he said. 

Technology is evolving. “AI has made us faster internally and more precise externally. We are in the early phase of our AI rollout and are excited about the competitive advantages that will present as we press on with the development of more AI-tools.  

The firms that win are those treating AI not as a cost-cutting tool alone, but as a means of expanding the quality of advice to more clients while freeing relationship managers to focus on judgment, relationships, and complex planning – areas that AI cannot replicate. When asked about the reliability of AI output, Lin noted that modern generative AI systems can now assess whether the data is flawed or unreliable from the outset.

Wealth management firms and others that are not using AI are going to suffer information gaps, he said. 

Talent
An underlying and important issue for wealth management in Asia is talent management, with the age-old debate on what services to grow in-house and which services to hire from outside. 

“Our in-house talent development is anchored by the WRISE Academy, which provides structured training programmes for wealth consultants and industry partners at various stages of their careers,” Lin said when asked about this. “Complementing this is our internship programme, which offers graduating students an immersive experience that spans exposure to financial institutions, regulatory bodies and leading industry players. It is designed to build a sustainable pipeline of future-ready talent for the industry as a whole. 

“On the other hand, external hires, particularly those with deep local market expertise and established client relationships, allow us to enter new markets with credibility and accelerate our growth in regions where relationships and regulatory insight take years to build,” Lin added. 

(This news service has interviewed Derrick Tan, chairman of WRISE Group, about the business and its strategy.)

(Editor's comment: This publication was pleased to get into the details of how WRISE operates. Growth has been strong; what will now count is how well the business evolves in the next few years as a rising generation of wealth holders reviews its arrangements. This is a market in flux. A few days ago, a global survey by Natixis Investment Managers found that Asia-Pacific advisors said that their clients are more likely to change whom their advisors than the worldwide average. That creates an opportunity for firms such as WRISE, which exudes a youthful, disruptive appeal. Ultimately, however, it is hard results that will matter over time.)