It can be easy, amid the competitive scrum of wealth management, to overlook the importance of discretionary portfolio management (DPM). Investing money on a client’s behalf: it’s a simple enough concept. It is also profitable and ‘sticky’ – get it right, and a wealthy client is likely to stay loyal for a long time, safe in the knowledge that their wealth and assets are busy accruing interest.
But DPM isn’t easy. Few financial institutions are truly good at it. Santander Private Banking is one of them. The Spanish financial giant’s DPM and advisory mandates attained €54 billion ($56.4 billion) in total assets in the nine months to the end of September 2024 – achieving 10% client growth and 30% revenue growth year-to-date. Advisory mandates rose 14% year-on-year in the nine months to the end of September 2024. Our external panel of judges, drawn from across the private banking world, cited the bank’s “commendable” improvements in portfolio customisation and client empowerment across DPM, and its “strong” asset growth and revenue metrics.
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