Global Private Banking and Wealth Management

The Global Market

Wealth management was a high-growth financial-services sector in the 1990s, but it slowed between 2000 and 2002 with the general turndown in global investment markets. The future, however, looks bright. Many new competitors have entered the glamorous wealth management and private banking industry, and the number of millionaires is growing faster than the overall population. However, the business faces some challenges.

Wealth management is, generally speaking, the business of providing services to the wealthy. Private banking is a subset of wealth management and consists of providing more or less traditional banking services to the wealthy. In addition to private banking, wealth management services may include brokerage, insurance, asset management advice, offshore and onshore services, and even concierge services. The onshore-offshore distinction is quite important. Clients in need of offshore services have particular reasons for keeping their wealth outside of the country in which they reside, such as confidentiality, taxes and geopolitical risk.

The wealthy are not homogeneous; numerous market segments exist within the wealth management market...