Strategy to Create a Private Banking Hub - A Case Study of Singapore

The growing affluence in the Asian economy has triggered many large banking corporations to establish a stronger presence in Asia to tap the growing needs for wealth management services. In particular, the area of private banking services has been in the spotlight recently with many reports quoting that only one third of the high net worth individuals���¢�������� (HNWI) asset worth about US$8.4 trillion in Asia (PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2006) is professionally managed by private banks. Derobert (2007), the executive director of Geneva Private Banker���¢��������s Association has clearly identified Singapore as a rising international financial centre, competing against established places such as London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The purpose of this project is to analyse the Singapore model of developing her financial services industry, in particular the private banking industry. The key question is to what extent has the model been useful in attracting the global and regional private banks, to establish their presence in Singapore. The research will focus mainly on comparing and integrating findings from official public sources, leading consulting companies and international publications, and the result will serve as the basis to critic on the overall success of the strategy in conjunction with theoretical framework from Porter (1990)