WEALTH ENGINES:
The gains demonstrate a flow of wealthy customers into Singapore, with OCBS and DBS reporting new stock highs and upbeat performances this year
Singapore’s top lenders are riding a wealth management boom that has propelled their stock prices to record highs and helped second-quarter profit beat expectations.
Wealth fees at DBS Group Holdings Ltd (星展集團), Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC, 華僑銀行) and United Overseas Bank Ltd (UOB, 大華銀行) all jumped to all-time highs. DBS saw a 42 percent increase to S$919 million (US$716 million), while those at OCBC rose by 44 percent and UOB’s by more than 29 percent. The performance helped to support earnings at a time when lending income is softer amid lower interest rates in the country.
OCBC, which is Singapore’s best-performing stock this year with a 50 percent advance, saw its share price hit a fresh record on Friday. DBS’s stock also touched a new high, bringing the gains for the year to about 34 percent. Meanwhile, UOB’s share price slipped about 2 percent after increasing by more than 20 percent.
Photo: AFP
The banks’ gains underscore rising flows from the rich into Singapore, which is vying with Hong Kong to attract wealthy clients amid the prolonged war in the Middle East and turbulence across the world. At the same time, the lenders have been expanding their presence in Hong Kong with plans to hire relationship managers.
DBS has been seeking to bank customers when they are younger and starting to grow their wealth, so that the relationship stays when the clients become richer.
“We’re building these wealth engines a lot earlier and onshore in their home markets,” chief executive officer Tan Su Shan (陳淑珊) said in an interview with Bloomberg Television last week. Taiwan is the market with the most potential for the wealth management business over the next two to three years, she added.
At OCBC, CEO Tan Teck Long (陳德龍), who took the role at the beginning of this year, is counting on wealth management to be among the bank’s main growth engines.
The country’s second-largest bank delivered a 22 percent profit growth on Friday and upgraded this year’s outlook. That echoed the upbeat performance of larger rival DBS the day before, which said total income for this year is expected to exceed last year’s levels.
OCBC’s Tan raised this year’s loan growth target, and is expecting an expansion in total income even with the anticipated slight decline in lending income.
UOB, which also reported on Friday, met estimates as profit rose 10 percent with the results underpinned by wealth management fees. It maintained this year’s targets, expecting low single-digit fee income growth.
