Private bankers are a breed apart. A conversation with an investment banker tends to be transaction based. They want to know what you know about a deal and in turn tell you what great IPO or merger they’re sweating over. With senior wealth managers the reverse is often true.
Interviews in this instance sprawl – but happily so. You get to inspect the grass verges rather than the road ahead; to take time to smell the roses.
So it was when Euromoney sat down to talk to Vincent Lecomte, a 30-year veteran of France’s global lender, who has been chief executive of BNP Paribas Wealth Management for more than a decade. Over the course of two Zoom calls, we covered sustainability, sailing, his love of everything digital and plenty more.
But we started on a more prosaic note. The wealth and asset management arm of the French banking firm posted a 14.7% year-on-year rise in revenues in the full year 2021, to €3.42 billion, with pre-tax income up 63.1% on an annualized basis to €951 million. The sector generated global net asset inflows of €7.7 billion last year.
Much of the growth was due to a sharp rise in fee income and increased loan activity, plus strong net asset inflows across asset management and real-estate services, particularly in the US, France and Germany.
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