Singapore’s wealth management success should extend to everyday families

AT S$6.7 trillion, Singapore’s assets under management (AUM) have reached a figure large enough to inspire both pride and distance.

The country’s AUM grew 10.1 per cent on an annual basis in 2025 to touch that number, the Monetary Authority of Singapore reported. That success should be welcomed – but it is not complete merely because more money is managed here.

The wealth management industry brings good jobs, global capital and expertise. The harder test is whether Singapore’s financial capabilities improve the lives of people who will never enter a private bank.

For a family office, wealth management means preserving capital across generations, structuring succession and giving strategically.

For most citizens, it means making Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings last, paying the mortgage, understanding insurance and avoiding scams. Both parties share a financial centre, but not a financial world.

The law reinforces that distance. Under the Securities and Futures Act, an individual generally qualifies as an accredited investor if they have an income of at least S$300,000, net financial assets above S$1 million, or net personal assets above S$2 million, excluding the primary residence beyond a cap.

That threshold serves a legitimate purpose: risky, complex products should not be sold indiscriminately, and private banking cannot be a universal entitlement.

Expert financial advice for all

But access to products is not the central issue. Access to good judgment is.

People below private-wealth thresholds face decisions no less complex than those above: whether to repay a mortgage or invest, how much insurance is enough, how to draw down retirement savings and how to divide a modest estate fairly.

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Yet, mass-market advice too often arrives as a product sale, an app prompt or an exhortation to become more financially literate. The wealthy buy time, synthesis and judgment. Everyone else is handed information and left to assemble it themselves.

That gap is socially corrosive – not because everyone deserves identical service, but because a nation’s best financial capabilities can look reserved for those who already have the greatest financial security.

Singapore should deliberately build a “wealth management dividend”. Banks and fintechs should translate tools developed for affluent clients into affordable, fixed-fee planning for ordinary households, with transparent costs and no obligation to buy a product.

The Plan with CPF platform and the Singapore government’s MoneySense programme provide a foundation; what is missing is affordable human guidance at major life transitions: marriage, home purchase, caregiving, retirement and bereavement.

We should assess our wealth hub not only by assets under management or family offices housed, but also by household outcomes: whether more citizens hold adequate emergency buffers, understand the fees they pay, have a retirement-income plan and can get trusted advice before a crisis hits.

The industry does not succeed merely by attracting more capital or more wealthy clients. It succeeds when the expertise concentrated here helps ordinary households make better decisions, withstand shocks, retire with greater security and pass on whatever wealth they have.

A global hub needs domestic legitimacy. Singapore need not make private-banking universal.

But it must make world-class financial judgment more widely available. The strongest wealth centre in Asia will not be the one that serves only the greatest fortunes; it will be the one that can show, in measurable household outcomes, that its expertise improves the financial security of ordinary families.