Reuters
Hong Kong


Swiss bank UBS is looking to grow wealth assets in Asia-Pacific to the tune of 15% annually as it builds its presence in China and consolidates its leading position in the region.
With 269bn Swiss francs ($280.4bn) of invested assets, UBS ranks as the biggest wealth manager in Asia-Pacific. Last year, it attracted nearly 27bn Swiss francs of net new assets in Asia, confirming it as the fastest-growing region for a wealth management business in which it is the global leader.
“Here we need to grow two to three times the Asia growth story. It’s 15% and above that we want to grow,” Juerg Zeltner, Wealth Management CEO at UBS, told Reuters in an interview yesterday.
The main driver of growth in Asia was undoubtedly Chinese wealth, with China now representing UBS’ biggest private banking market outside its home of Switzerland and the US, Zeltner, the Swiss executive said.
“China is clearly our number one opportunity. China is already our largest wealth management market (excluding Switzerland and the US). It’s bigger than Germany,” said Zeltner, who spends 30% of his time in Asia.
Last month, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, putting renewed emphasis on wealth management after shrinking the investment banking business, said he expected Asia to represent 30% of UBS’s global invested assets within a decade.
UBS is betting on a strategy that allows wealthy clients to have their assets managed out of offshore centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore but also at home in China, where the bank has been operating an onshore wealth management business since 2004.
This contrast with the approach of many international rivals, who prefer to cater for wealthy Chinese clients from offshore centres only.  “If you look at global wealth, around 70% is today onshore,” said Zeltner.
“In the long-term, it’s pretty clear that with all the ongoing changes, people will regain more confidence in the (Chinese) government and people will want their assets close to home and I want to be able to access those assets,” he said.  Confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg, the UBS executive said he had put the bank’s Australian wealth division under review, and was exploring all options, including a possible sale.
“The (Australian) market is dominated by local banks. It is very competitive environment and of course we look at our options in such an environment,” Zeltner said.