UBS expands wealth service to target Australia’s mining capital
[SYDNEY] UBS Group promoted Tim Clemenger to be its first client adviser for wealth management based in Perth, the Swiss bank’s latest move to attract more rich Australians.
Clemenger will be tasked with building the bank’s clientele in a city which the head of UBS Global Wealth Management Australia, Michael Marr, estimates is home to more than 20 billionaires and around 100 people worth over US$100 million. Marr said he plans to add more advisers to high-net-worth individuals and families.
“Per capita, we think it’s the wealthiest city in Australia,” Marr said in an interview in Sydney on Friday (Mar 28). “Now we’re really in a position to grow”, after acquiring Credit Suisse and integrating that.
Perth has become a boomtown in recent years for family offices and money management firms that handle savings on behalf of the ultra rich. Morgan Stanley and LGT Crestone Wealth Management are among other companies with offices in the city. Global wealth firms without a local presence have had to contend with the challenges of bridging the more than 2,000 mile gap to bases in Sydney.
UBS has established offshore desks in Singapore to help cater to its clients in Australia and Japan with domestic wealth growing. The firm’s global co-head of wealth Iqbal Khan told an Australian conference last year that his own move to Asia underlined how it had become the unit’s key growth geography.
The lender plans to grow the more than US$30 billion in high-net-worth money it manages in Australia. High-net-worth wealth in Australia grew 7.9 per cent in 2023, second only to India among Asia-Pacific countries and above the global average of 4.7 per cent, according to a Capgemini report.
UBS has around 800 staff in Australia and some 130 work within wealth management. It re-entered the private wealth business in the country with the acquisition of Credit Suisse in 2022, providing a pathway back into a market it had exited in 2015.
The appointment of Clemenger builds on the work by Tim Andrew who re-established the bank’s business advice arm, UBS Global Banking, in Perth in 2018. Andrew began earlier this month as head of unified global banking for South-east Asia, India and Australia, reporting to Selina Cheung and based in Singapore. The division is aimed at combining wealth management and investment banking advice into one service to business owners. BLOOMBERG
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