For an overseas bank that has delivered outstanding service and performance for HNW individuals. Attention will be paid to factors including changes in client-facing head count, retention of top staff, changes in assets under management, market performance, broader services and innovation, as well as client feedback. The winner of this award will also have shown unmatched ability to service clients with cross-border needs.
Private Bank of the Year – International
J.P. Morgan Private Bank
Category sponsor Blackstone
No two UHNW clients are the same. It’s a cliché, but it also happens to be true. Creative entrepreneurs need assured advisers who understand their clients’ goals and requirements. And that’s a principle under- pinning the way J.P. Morgan Private Bank goes about its business. The institution prides itself on the ‘highly personalised and goal-oriented’ experience it provides to an eclectic mix of international UHNWs.
In a year where uncertainty and volatility produced only tepid results for many wealth managers, J.P. Morgan has managed to excel through what the bank calls a ‘laser focus’ on client outcomes. In 2022, its US private bank reported full-year revenues of $6.2 billion – an all-time record, $1.1 billion higher than the previous year and around double the figure from six years ago.
‘The firm is not growing by accident,’ said one Spear’s judge of J.P. Morgan’s barnstorming success, which saw it take home our gong not just for the International Private Bank of the Year but also the inaugural Spear’s Grand Prix for the leading private client firm of the year. ‘It’s an incredibly impressive organisation.’
The bank has lofty ambitions. A target for the following decade, set in 2021, will see the firm strive to facilitate $2.5 trillion in financing for green initiatives and other sustainable development. It also remains at the forefront of technological innovation in private banking, with its new ‘investment preference’ screening software, OpenInvest, helping clients to tailor their ESG investing around themes that matter most to them.
Summing up the personalised support provided by the bank, one judge said: ‘Quite often, banks dealing with UHNWs find an excuse not to give them institutional-level advice or pricing. This one doesn’t.’
Goldman Sachs
The judging panel said that Goldman Sachs’s private banking services are ‘a cut above’ in terms of calibre of staff and consistency of service, especially commending their communications with clients, which are regularly boosted with genuine insight from experts and leaders in their field.
With access to a global network of private bankers, Goldman Sachs’s private clients can be sure that whatever their problem, there is a team on hand to deal with it, along with the high level of service and flexibility you would expect from a giant name of the financial world.
Lombard Odier