Barclays plans to add Singapore as its second booking centre for its private bank operations in Asia Pacific, marking a full return to the wealth hub.
Rich clients will be able to park assets in the city-state by 2026, the London-based firm said in a statement on Tuesday. India has been its sole booking centre in the region after Barclays sold its wealth businesses in Singapore and Hong Kong to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) in 2016.
Barclays’ move is significant, as Singapore vies with Switzerland and Hong Kong to be the world’s most popular destination for offshore wealth, attracting flows from China, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
The Singapore plan “positions us to strategically capture strong global and regional inflows”, Nitin Singh, Asia Pacific head of Barclays’ private bank, said in the statement.
The UK bank will face no shortage of competition in the Southeast Asian nation, with international and domestic banks all striving to capture the growing wealth in the region.
Wealth team expansion
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Barclays has plans to grow its wealth team threefold in India and Singapore as the bank seeks to quadruple its regional assets by the end of 2028, Singh said in a July interview without providing numbers.
The bank re-entered Singapore in 2021 when it hired Evonne Tan, formerly from UBS, to head its local private bank unit. “We have gone through a three-year journey of re-establishing our presence in Singapore,” Tan said in the statement.
A new booking centre in the country shows the bank’s long-term commitment to the region, she added.
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Barclays currently runs booking centres in six locations, including India, the UK and Switzerland. The firm’s statement made no mention of Hong Kong, long seen as a financial hub rival to Singapore.
The lender’s private bank client assets and liabilities climbed to almost GBP202 billion ($341.39 billion) as of September, from about GBP199 billion in the preceding quarter, according to the bank’s third-quarter presentation.
