An initial target list of 50 clients with their own family
offices has been drawn up for HSBC’s newly formed
group, Family Office Partners, but the bank is taking a
cautious approach to growing the business.
In the bank’s first half results, HSBC
announced it had launched the service for families and
their family offices in August. The clients will be
served by its private bank in partnership with its global banking
and markets unit.
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“It’s definitely early days. There’s
been an internal soft launch and there hasn’t been an official
launch as such,” Neil Standring, a co-ordinator of
the global steering committee, told PBI.
The 50 clients originate from the Middle East,
Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific where Standring said there
was a drive to expand its presence further.
The “very large clients” that the family
office is designed to service are typically those with net worth
of more than $500m and who have a broad spread of
personal, corporate and cross-border interests.
Standring would not be drawn on a target
figure for assets under management but said their
business clients typically would have a significant
portion of their wealth tied up in their business
interests.
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By GlobalData“Working together, Private Banking and Global
Banking and Markets launched a family office partnership to provide
better, more holistic relationship management, for our wealthiest
clients,” the bank said.
Emerging markets focus
Standring said that 90% of the clients already
have an existing account with HSBC Private Bank and are typically
from emerging markets or actively invest in them, a focus the bank
has traditionally pursued.
The bank has plans to extend Family Office Partners coverage to
more quasi-institutional clients next year. The number of clients
handled by the partnership is unlikely to increase until next year,
Standring said.
“One can see in time, [external clients] will
be attracted to the partnership,” he said adding that the family
office partnership evolved because of client demand.
“People were saying ‘I get shown deals by
other banks. Why aren’t you showing me your deals?’”
Each client will have a ‘Client Servicing
Team’ comprising a relationship manager from the private banking
arm, a corporate or investment banker from Global Banking and a
representative from Global Markets who will then source specialists
such as hedge fund experts.
