Singapore banks are reaping what they sowed in wealth management

Higher income from the wealth segment offset weaker loan margins.

A report from Bloomberg said Singapore’s big three banks have invested heavily in their wealth-management businesses over the past year and the results are starting to show.

Higher income from servicing Asia’s more well-heeled individuals helped DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. and United Overseas Bank Ltd. offset bad-loan provisions and weaker loan margins to post better-than-expected first-quarter profits. OCBC’s wealth-management revenue surged 70 percent from a year earlier. The banks have expanded their wealth operations to take advantage of growing affluence in the Asia-Pacific region, where individual wealth surpassed North America for the first time in 2015, according to Cap Gemini SA.

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