Booz & Co highlight #MiddleEast’s Private Banking trends.

Booz & Co have highlighted the Middle East’s Private Banking trends in a recent Booz & Co report. Countries rich in natural resources (in particular the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council) will likely return to accelerated wealth creation even before the global economy fully recovers. Government-led infrastructure projects will further boost the HNWI population in these regions, and many affluent/HNWIs will prosper directly, via family businesses and small and medium-size enterprises, or indirectly by inheriting wealth from older generations.

Today, large wealthy families account for most of the region’s wealth. In some cases these families have 100 or 150 members spread across different geographies, many of them running diverse, independent businesses. In the UAE especially, 20 percent to 30 percent of total wealth is also held by expatriates living and working in the country, including Asians and Westerners as well as other Arabs.

To succeed in the increasingly attractive and maturing Middle East market, private banks must do three things:

• Integrate their core offerings and extend them from individual wealth management to family business advisory services.

• Show sensitivity about cultural predispositions, family relationships, and behavioral preferences of the diverse client base in the region through a coverage model that takes into account investable assets, sources of wealth, ethnicity, and life-cycle and lifestyle differences.

• Implement a best-in-class model that delivers services in an efficient, personal, and friction free manner, while satisfying specific client requirements. Those requirements can be anything from complying with sharia (Islamic law) to being able to hold assets in such offshore domiciles as Switzerland and Singapore.

If you want to find out more about the Middle East’s Private Banking trends – Private Banking World Middle East 2011 is the premier forum for the region’s private banks, family offices and their partners to access the latest wealth management strategies and solutions. You can download a brochure for the event here.

You can read the full Booz & Co report here.