Search the results Chinatrust has avoided head-on competition with its big rivals, carving an onshore niche and offering genuine open architecture
Unlike most of its main domestic competitors, Chinatrust’s wealth management business features strongly in Euromoney’s 2006 private banking poll in Taiwan, scoring third overall, behind big global banks Citigroup and UBS. The good showing, says Steve Chou, president of Chinatrust’s retail banking group, is evidence that the bank’s strategy of steering away from the larger competition is working.
Right from the start
“We chose the right business model from the beginning,” says Chou. “We were very pragmatic and played to our strengths.”
Those strengths, says Chou, are the bank’s strong domestic brand equity, a good sales and service culture and the “open architecture” that all private banks are so fond of. Unlike many of its competitors in Taiwan, however, Chinatrust has a reasonable claim on the term. “We decided to be open from the beginning,” says Chou. “We don’t own any agency company or asset manager. Our securities arm is very small. We just take deposits.”
Chinatrust seeks Taiwan’s middle ground in private banking: those clients with liquid assets of between US$300,000 and US$1.5