OCBC Bank Partners With Wealth Management School

Robbie Lawther

1 August 2018

has partnered with the Wealth Management Institute (WMI) of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Asia’s centre of excellence for wealth management education and research.

The partnership has instigated the launch of OCBC-WMI Wealth Advisory Programme to equip more than 330 of its retail wealth advisors with private banking skills and standards, the Singapore-headquartered bank and education institutions said. The programme will help raise standards for the entire industry by upskilling retail banking wealth advisors with investment advisory principles in portfolio construction and management, asset allocation, deep relationship management, and ethics and compliance, the bank said.

Such developments come at a time when there continues to be discussion about how to lift the volume of trained wealth management professionals to keep pace with the rise of an affluent Asian middle class. To keep track of some of the post-graduate and MBA-themed course for the sector, see this summary here.

“These programmes will form a structured wealth management learning pathway for OCBC’s Premier Banking and Premier Private Client advisors,” said Foo Mee Har, chief executive of WMI. “The faculty for the OCBC-WMI Advisory Programme will be drawn from WMI’s international network of lecturers, which include leading wealth management practitioners and NTU academics with extensive industry experience and who are well-versed with the latest trends and developments.”

The OCBC-WMI Wealth Advisory Programme will consist of two certifications – the OCBC-WMI Premier Wealth Certification and OCBC-WMI Premier Private Client Wealth Certification – and both will be aligned to the Institute of Banking and Finance Singapore (IBF) Standards.

All OCBC Premier Banking relationship managers will attend the OCBC-WMI Premier Wealth Certification course. The course focuses on developing skills in providing investment advisory and client management. OCBC Bank’s own Premier Banking investment and insurance products are employed as tools to ensure that the training is realistic; using real life case studies and role-playing scenarios, the OCBC Bank wealth advisor practises portfolio construction, asset allocation, product application and deep relationship management skills.

The higher-level OCBC-WMI Premier Private Client Certification course is targeted at client advisors who serve OCBC Premier Private Client customers with assets under management (AUM) of S$1 million ($734,000) or more.