Last year was a tough one for the wealth management unit of Thailand’s oldest commercial bank. Revenues rose a modest 5.7% year on year at Siam Commercial Bank’s private banking division while assets under management were unchanged.
Lalitphat Toranavikrai, CEO of SCB Julius Baer (SCB has a private banking joint venture with Swiss firm Julius Baer), says 2021 was always going to be a year of reorienting the business with a digital revolution for its 12,000 clients.
Below the surface, the SCB private banking team managed to generate some healthy returns. Take the bank’s discretionary portfolio management offering, which seeks to select investment themes and structures in line with individual clients’ ambitions and risk appetites. These included SCB’s Alpha fund, which had an annual return of 36% in 2021. The Stella fund, a quant offering, returned 50%.
SCB’s private asset solutions cater to clients strongly focused on specific higher-return sectors or industries that are difficult to access through the public markets. These include the Pagaya Opportunity Fund and Hamilton Lane Global Private Asset Fund; SCB Private Banking is the sole distributor for both.
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