Canadian firm RBC Wealth Management has added firepower to its Asia team in recent months. In February 2023, RBC hired private banking veteran Tan Yuh Harn to head its ultra-high net-worth solutions and discretionary portfolio management team in Singapore. Tan brings more than 25 years of experience at Credit Suisse Wealth Management, UBS Wealth Management and BNP Paribas Wealth Management.
A month earlier, Alvis Chan joined RBC WM from UBS as executive director of UHNW solutions, based in Hong Kong. His hire followed the addition in Singapore of Ajay Saratchandran as head of funds for Asia, drawing on his deep experience from years with Standard Chartered, ANZ Group and Manulife.
RBC WM is leaving nothing to chance as competition increases across the region. Rather, it is busily building intellectual muscle to stand out from the pack.
It’s something RBC does well, winning our Singapore award for best private bank for high net-worth clients.
Although the bank has a wide network of bankers throughout the Americas and the UK, the real energy is in the globe’s most dynamic economic region. In Asia, the team is constantly reinforcing RBC’s focus with new family advisers, lawyers, accountants and tax experts, and real estate company relationships.
It’s clear the rate of change in international markets and in the economic and geopolitical pecking orders is accelerating. While RBC and its clients can’t halt change, they can plan for it.
The teams in Singapore and Hong Kong are particularly astute at helping clients preserve their wealth in turbulent times – even more so for clients with beneficiaries in Canada, the US and the UK, for whom RBC is creating a mix of onshore and offshore investment solutions.
These onshore and offshore trust companies allow RBC to provide a wider range of investment structures to serve HNW and UHNW clients. It also helps it to address multi-generational wealth transfer needs as the next generation steps up and makes its concerns and aspirations heard.
Hiring more Asia market veterans is a timely way to highlight the competitive advantages offered by its global families strategy. It’s also a nod to how competition is really heating up as Asia’s wealthiest families brace for wealth transfer decisions and succession planning.
RBC’s advantage is that as HNW families become more mobile and global, the need to navigate cross-border financial complexities requires a certain skillset, one the bank has demonstrated for decades in Asia.
There’s nothing rote about sorting things out for an Asia-based global citizen with business operations in Canada, children at school in the US, and investments in the UK. RBC’s specialty is taking all these moving parts to build a portfolio to meet long-term financial goals – and set a high bar for its wealth management peers.