1 Give advice to a UK bank that has not previously been engaged in the ASEAN region on what problems it might face when setting up in the area. Private banking has been one of the main growth areas of the banking industry in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region over the past few years, but private bankers have found that newly rich ASEAN clientele can be quite a different market from the traditional customer in Europe and North America.

Mr Robert Bunker and Mr John Cheung, directors of Wardley Investment Services (Hong Kong), said both Wardley and its corporate parent, the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank Group, have adopted what has been described as the American interpretation of private banking in their approach to the ASEAN marketplace.

Mr Bunker explained, ‘We provide a one-stop shop for financial services to high net worth individuals, drawing on the wide range of services available in the group. There are many smaller banks which have seen private banking as a profitable growth area, but it is difficult for them to provide the breadth of services with just a small representative office in the region. As a result, they struggle to develop the mass of business necessary to make a living.’

The demands of ASEAN customers do tend to differ from those of their counterparts in Europe and North America. Mr Cheung said that, in Asia as a whole, private banking is not as tax driven as it is in much of the West: ‘There are other differences. For example, the division of corporate and private wealth in Asia is often blurred, and some Asian clients are very aggressive in the way they like to invest. Again, such tendencies can mean a different attitude on the part of the private bank.’

Mr Bunker added, ‘I think that you will notice in the marketing strategy of the group that we are trying to shrug off our traditional image and create a more adventurous and aggressive picture.’

He said the infrastructure of the group provides a great boon. In the ASEAN region, the bank has a presence in one form or another in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.