Agricultural Bank of China Private Banking
Agricultural Bank of China, led by president and chairman Zhou Mubing, has developed a large wealth management product portfolio for its high net-worth customers, and has 309 private banking and wealth management centres operating across China and a team of 2,000 professional managers.
The bank’s private banking division spent much of 2018 assisting HNW clients in setting up a range of family trusts.
Led by Sun Ning, the president of private banking, ABC helped wealthy Hong Kong businesswoman, Yu Ai, to set up a charitable trust last year that had Rmb30 million ($4.5 million) in assets, the biggest in China established so far with the assistance of a commercial bank. It was set up in collaboration with Citic Trust to help poor children born with congenital heart diseases in Guangdong province.
Charitable trusts are a relatively new concept in China, but ABC private bankers say they are increasingly in demand among first-generation entrepreneurs and second-generation heirs.
By the end of the third quarter of 2018, the bank’s private bank management assets reached Rmb1.2 trillion. The number of private banking clients rose to 102,000, an increase of more than 9,500 from the beginning of last year.
Many of the clients increasingly seek risk management strategies to help them preserve wealth across generations, forming family trusts first before forming charitable trusts.
ABC collaborates with several of the nation’s top financial trust companies in serving the trust needs of its wealthy clients. The bank has established a special marketing team that helps families design and arrange the legal structure of charitable trusts. The process also involves assisting clients in selecting public welfare institutions and trust institutions.
Such charitable trusts have the foundation of the trustee and the trust company as the dual trustee, while ABC assumes the role of custodian and financial adviser.