No foreign financial institution comes close to competing with Citi in Singapore. The US firm’s breadth and depth in the Lion City is unparalleled, and it stretches deep into the private banking realm.
As it does in other markets, Citi breaks up its wealth demographic into five pillars: emerging affluent, affluent, high and ultra-high net-worth, and mega wealth.
While it focuses keenly on all of them, the key number is $10 million, above which an individual or a family can become a private bank client.
Given that you cannot be considered a regional power in private banking without a serious Singapore presence, this matters.
Citi’s success is no accident. It opened its first office in 1902, and is the largest foreign banking employer in the city-state. Singapore is home to a number of its strategically important hubs, including its Asia Pacific Citi Service Centre, and one of its six global Innovation Labs.
These are central to its enduring success. Its Singapore Lab is filled with specialists focused on serving UHNW individuals and ensuring that global clients know what is in their portfolio, and why it matters. It’s a constant process of communication and education, a single point where the client is offered a customized portfolio, tailored to their risk appetites.
The bank’s Labs interconnect globally, ensuring the client secures the best possible immediate and long-term financial advice. That is of immense value, particularly given a chaotic global political environment and the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic to all firms and families.
Singapore is filled with foreign financial institutions offering world-class advice, across stocks and bonds, commodities and real estate, wealth transfer and succession planning, to the country’s, the region’s and the world’s wealthiest families. But no one does it there on a better, bigger and broader scale than Citi.