SIX YEARS AGO it would have been almost heretical to suggest to private banks that they should offer their competitors' products to clients. Now it seems incredible not to do so.
Although private banks are no longer expected to manufacture the best of all products, they are expected to distribute them. As a result, banks are being pushed into third-party product provision, or open architecture. But with differentiation a key objective, private banks are tackling the move towards open architecture in their own individual ways.
Open architecture is not an entirely new concept. Many private banks have been offering third-party products for some time in areas where they lacked the expertise to offer a full product range to clients. Non-traditional asset classes such as hedge funds and structured products tended to be the primary products to be outsourced.
Gaps in expertise "In the 1990s, the private banks were offering funds of hedge funds themselves. But while they weren't terrible at it, they didn't do a great job," says Mark Chambers, head of sales management in Europe for Man Investments. "The new generation of clients reacted to this average performance, and the private banks were forced to look at third-party providers."
