Edelweiss Private Wealth Management
Wealth management in India is intensely competitive – and for good reason. The number of high net-worth families is set to double by 2025, to 500,000, with a total cumulative net worth of $5 trillion. At least half of that additional wealth will be created by first-generation entrepreneurs, led by the country’s digital barons. Meanwhile, India is reckoned to have between 40 and 45 family offices, with average assets under management of $318 million. All those facts and figures are provided directly by Edelweiss Financial Services, the winner of this year’s award for India’s best provider of private wealth management.
Anshu Kapoor, head of private wealth management at Edelweiss, says three customer groups dominate its product offering: new- and next-generation entrepreneurs; C-suite executives who amass stock options; and family offices.
What impresses most is not so much the speed with which Edelweiss became one of the country’s big-three private wealth managers, but its steely-eyed determination to press home its advantage. Total assets under management rose 44% to $12.4 billion in the full year 2018, and are on track to hit $14.1 billion in 2019.
Edelweiss has offices in 10 domestic cities, and is looking to open more as wealth rises in second- and third-tier cities. Under the leadership of Kapoor and Rashesh Shah, the group chairman and chief executive, Edelweiss has grown into the country’s best provider of quality wealth-management products, ranging from succession planning and philanthropy to real estate and structured credit.
It was the first financial group to offer distressed assets and infrastructure yield funds, plus it organizes hundreds of annual town halls and workshops and has joined up with customer retention software company Salesforce to provide an enhanced digital experience for high net-worth customers.