Sanctum Wealth has quickly made a name for itself among India’s rich. Since it was set up in 2016, its client asset base has grown at a compound average rate of 30% to $2.3 billion.
Founder and chief executive Shiv Gupta used the acquisition of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s India private banking business to start Sanctum. The pure-play wealth manager works with clear principles: focus on share of wallet, become the clients’ primary adviser, and offer them a broad products platform.
Sanctum has six licences for its offerings in India, including for portfolio management, research and stockbroking – all tailored for the roughly 1,200-plus high and ultra-high net-worth clients it works with.
Perhaps more importantly, Gupta and his team really understand the Indian wealth market and its characteristics. That is clear from the way the firm is looking at the next-generation and millennial base, realizing that a business model that works with HNW clients won’t quite work with the affluent or millennial group.
To bridge that gap, Sanctum unveiled its Sanctum Next platform in 2022, targeting the next-generation and millennial wealthy to help them stay on top of trends, portfolios and their wealth management needs.
Sanctum Next is almost entirely digital, so clients are brought on board digitally and do their investing, monitoring and reporting online. The platform offers all the key wealth management services: investment objective setting and advice; comprehensive discretionary asset allocation strategies; an aggregation platform that consolidates portfolios across advisers, asset classes and product decisions; and an international investing platform that allows portfolio creation in rupees and foreign currencies.
The offerings may be less bespoke than what is offered to UHNW clients, but Sanctum has found it easier when it comes to scaling this platform to a broader base of clients.
Next-gen and millennials can also solve their non-investment needs through Sanctum. The team, which has doubled in size from 55 people six years ago to 110 now, offers estate planning advisory, including drawing up wills, to protect families’ and the next generations’ interests. A real estate aggregation platform, tax advisory and compliance, life and asset protection services and financing to avoid liquidating long-term employee stock investment schemes are all available for clients.
These efforts are paying off for Sanctum in attracting the next-generation wealthy.
Sanctum is aiming for client assets of between $10 billion and $20 billion as its business evolves, and expects revenue growth of 25% annually over the next five years. It also wants to leverage technology further to bring down its cost-to-income ratio to between 65% and 70% from 124% currently.
Those may be lofty ambitions, but Sanctum appears well on track to boost its franchise.