China Merchants Bank Private Banking suffered a blow when Wang Jing, who had run the business for more than a decade, quit the bank in January 2020 to join Credit Suisse. Wang was a 25-year veteran at CMB who had helped to set up its private banking operations in 2007.
But her departure did not derail CMB, which maintained its position as the largest – and, arguably, most influential – private bank in China, while further extending its lead over peers.
CMB had nearly 100,000 private banking clients at the end of last year, while its assets under management came close to Rmb2.78 trillion ($432 billion), the highest figure for all the private banks. This despite the fact the numbers are based on high net worth clients with at least Rmb10 million in investible assets, versus Rmb6 million at other Chinese private banks.
In 2020, CMB continued to impress the market with the rate of growth of its private banking business. The number of clients rose 22.4% year on year, while AUM jumped 24.4%. The average account balance for its private banking clients increased 43.6% to Rmb27.75 million.
CMB achieved this thanks to its wealth management capability and experience, as well as its ability to maximize collaboration between the private banking and corporate and investment banking businesses within the group across different platforms in mainland China, Hong Kong, Europe, the US and Australia.
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