The hires reinforce the private bank's determination to push even harder at the growing wealth management market in Singapore and Southeast Asia, the group said. Earlier this year, HSBC folded retail banking, wealth management and global private banking into a single unit as part of its restructuring efforts.

HSBC Private Banking in Singapore has appointed two senior figures to join its team.

The bank has named Ken Ng as market head for Singapore and Gary Goh as market head for Malaysia. The moves come after the bank earlier this year launched its wealth and personal banking arm, folding together retail banking, wealth management and global private banking. The new entity holds $1.4 trillion of wealth balances, with almost half of them from Asia. 

The group said that the “appointments also underscore efforts to cement Singapore’s role as a prime international wealth centre, supported by HSBC Singapore’s continued focus on growth, particularly to double overall combined retail and private banking total wealth over five years”.

It is unclear whether the hires are direct replacements for predecessors or are newly-created roles. In April this publication reported that the Singapore and Malaysia market head of HSBC Private Banking, Shang-Wei Chow, had left the bank after having joined in November 2016.

Philip Kunz, head of global private banking, Southeast Asia, HSBC Private Banking, said of the new hires: “Southeast Asia is home to some of the fastest growing economies spurring a next generation of wealthy entrepreneurs. Singapore and Malaysia sit at the nexus as many entrepreneurs look to expand regionally.”

Ng has been with HSBC since 1995 and joined HSBC Private Banking in 2014. In his previous role as desk head, he led his team over the last three consecutive years. He has 25 years of experience in financial services across wealth management, corporate banking and risk.

Goh joined HSBC in 2019. He has worked in financial markets for 23 years. Earlier he had been hired as a desk head with HSBC's Singapore team. Most recently, he had been market head with Standard Chartered.

Both men will report directly to Kunz and the appointments take immediate effect.

In other recent hires, HSBC Private Banking appointed two senior executives for Asia-Pacific. Jeffrey Yap was named head of investment services and product solutions, Southeast Asia, moving from his role of regional head of fixed income, currencies and commodity, Asia-Pacific. Adam Lau took up a newly-created role as regional head of markets solutions, Asia-Pacific.

Earlier this year the bank appointed one of its own senior figures, Greg Hingston, as the Asia-Pacific region head of the newly-formed wealth and personal banking segment created in the lender’s organisation overhaul.