Private banking clients of the Bank of China will mushroom from
several hundred to more than 1,000 in the next two years, Huang
Jinlao, marketing director of the lender's Personal Banking
Department, said in Beijing recently.
These clients will have a total 10 billion yuan (US$1.35
billion) of funds that will be managed by the country's
second-largest lender, he said.
It is the first Chinese-funded bank to provide domestic private
banking services since March 28, targeting those with liquid
financial assets above US$1 million, after Citibank, Standard
Chartered and other leading foreign-funded banks. The Chinese bank
aims to capture a bigger share of the country's increasingly large
wealth management market.
The country ranks No. 5 in terms of households with more than
US$1 million in liquid assets, following the United States, Japan,
Britain and Germany, according to a recent report released by the
Boston Consulting Group.
The number of such Chinese households totaled 310,000 by late
2006, up from 124,000 in 2001, and about 48,000 of them have more
than US$5 million in liquid assets.
Given China's continuous and rapid economic growth, the report
predicted the number to double by 2011, reaching 609,000.
Meanwhile, the number of wealthy families, those with financial
assets worth US$100,000 to US$1 million, or people classified as
China's middle class, is also expanding, according to the
report.
BCG forecast the number of wealthy families in China will rise
to 6.4 million by 2011 from 3.25 million now.
"It's quite possible that this wealth management market will
increase at an annual rate of more than 100 percent, as this market
is relatively new in China," said Huang.
According to Huang, BOC already had five years' experience in
middle and high-end management and had 770,000 well-off clients as
well as a team of more than 2,000 wealth managers.
"We can collaborate with our strategic partners like the Royal
Bank of Scotland and UBS to provide a wide array of
customer-tailored personal banking services, including investment
consulting, securities, insurance and others," added Huang.
He reiterated that the bank's advantages won't be able to be
easily copied in a short span of time by its foreign and domestic
competitors.
"Foreign-funded banks enjoy the advantage of more mature
products, better-qualified wealth managers and top trustworthy
brands," Ou Minggang, deputy chief editor of the Chinese Banker
magazine, said.
(Xinhua News Agency November 12, 2007)
