Millionaire's game for kids

Singapore: Standard Chartered started a trainee programme for the children of private-banking clients, joining bigger rivals including Citigroup and UBS in reaching out to Asia's next generation of millionaires.

Eighteen people aged 18 to 26 enrolled in the six-week programme in Singapore, which ended on August 13. They were assigned to projects ranging from identifying potential acquisition targets for London-based Standard Chartered to developing ideas for branch design, said Jungkiu Choi, the executive responsible for the course.

UBS and Citigroup, the biggest managers of money for the rich in the Asia-Pacific region, also run programmes for children of their private-banking clients as banks target the scions of millionaires. Asia's wealth may grow at double the global pace over the next four years, according to a Boston Consulting Group report published in June.

For "rich people, the next generation is their number one concern," Choi said in an interview in Singapore on Monday. "Transferring knowledge, discipline, business acumen, capability — that's more important to them than transferring their wealth."

Deepening issue

Private banks ignore the offspring of rich clients at their peril, said Justin Ong, PricewaterhouseCoopers' private banking leader for Asia-Pacific. A survey by PwC last year showed almost 40 per cent of private banks in Asia don't know how much money they'll keep when a clients' wealth gets transferred, he said.

"This is really a time of investment by the banks to develop relationships with the next generation of high net worth," Singapore-based Ong said. "They have only just come to realise the deepening issue around potential customer loss if they don't react to this and start building relationships now."

Standard Chartered, the UK lender that gets more than three-quarters of its profit from Asia, restarted wealth management operations in 2006 after a decade-long hiatus. It caters to people with more than $1 million (Dh3 million) of assets. Half of the interns' families have at least $10 million managed by the bank, said spokeswoman Ally Lim.

Standard Chartered's private bank increased assets under management by 27 per cent in Asia in the first half, more than twice the global pace.

The bank has no plans to extend the programme to other parts of Asia, since most senior executives are based in Singapore, said Choi. This year's participants came from Singapore, China, Dubai, South Korea, India, Indonesia and Malaysia and paid for transport and accommodation themselves.

In Asia, UBS runs a two-week course once a year in Singapore and Hong Kong on topics including wealth management, leadership and personal development. Citigroup's programme ran for five days this year and covered financial planning, investing and "soft skills" such as public speaking.