A Banking Leader Seizes a New Opportunity in Wealth Management

A leading commercial bank in the Asia-Pacific region was facing a double challenge: a shrinking profit pool in their core consumer banking segment and intensifying competition from fintechs and digital natives.

Wealth management beckoned as a promising opportunity space, with a strong growth trajectory, attractive capital-light economics, and stickier customer relationships. The bank had, in fact, considered it previously, but a host of internal challenges prevented senior management from pursuing it.

We worked closely with BankCo to take another look, and our analysis revealed a compelling business case that could, if executed properly, catalyze significant growth for the company. To make that happen, BankCo would need to design, build, launch, and scale a new end-to-end wealth management business even as its competitors were attempting to do the same.

Fortunately, that seed-to-scale business building approach is exactly what our Next solution delivers. Beginning with a detailed analysis of commercial viability, we worked closely with BankCo to develop a segmentation model that defined value propositions for three distinct segments: mass affluent, affluent, and private banking.

In this early phase, we also helped BankCo determine the capabilities it would need for the front line, its organization and operating model, investment products, and technology infrastructure. We created a roadmap that would guide the bank as it built up these essential enablers in subsequent phases.

Choosing a segment for early wins

We worked side by side with BankCo to launch a pilot in the affluent segment, which was the most profitable segment and also a segment where the company had the right to win. We guided the company on a two-pronged approach, focusing on commercial excellence and the development of a digital platform tailored to the needs of wealth management advisers and customers.

For commercial excellence, we helped the bank determine the right sales motions, carve out the frontline force from the consumer side to the new wealth management business, launch pilots in specific branches that soon scaled nationwide, and establish a new operating model. We weren’t working from ivory towers: We worked in the trenches, copiloting the program and driving a massive change management effort.

On the digital side the team was aided by members of our innovation & design and enterprise technology groups, who conducted extensive user interviews to understand their needs, analyzed user journeys to identify pain points, determined critical platform features, analyzed potential vendors, managed the chosen vendor, and launched an end-to-end platform that met the needs of clients and advisers.

Scaling the new business

The successful pilot in the affluent segment provided strong momentum for the teams to take the project to a new level, by scaling BankCo’s private banking segment. We addressed three elements: adapt the commercial excellence model used for the affluent pilot, expand the product line needed to meet the needs of sophisticated private banking clients, and address the technology foundation required to support these wealth products.

We also supported BankCo in developing a new operating model that provides the right management structures and talent for its wealth management business, applied our advanced analytics expertise to help the company improve its revenue model, and tested marketing campaigns and related programs to aid BankCo in acquiring and retaining customers for its new business.

Setting up for full potential

Building on these successes, BankCo and Bain are now designing and building offerings for the mass affluent market, including a market-leading digital wealth solution tailored to the mass affluent segment.

Throughout the multiyear partnership with BankCo, we can point to strong results from the work to date, including:

• assets under management (AUM) that outperformed the market by 3x, over a period of two years;
• more than $100 million of banked incremental revenue across wealth segments, with over $200 million in plan over the next two years;
• a significant increase in its wealth client base, outpacing the market by nearly a third;
• the wealth management business scaling from a team of 3 people to more than 200 people today;
• the launch of new adviser-facing and client-facing digital platforms, supported by a modernization of a 40-year-old back-end tech stack that will support the accelerated growth of the wealth business; and
• successful partnership with a global private bank to enhance product-shelf and build up strategic capabilities.

This multiyear engagement has proved transformative, enabling BankCo to thrive in a new business that will accelerate the entire enterprise’s growth trajectory.

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Singapore Economic Development Board & Bain

With Innovation & Business Building, Bain is an appointed venture studio partner of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) as part of its Corporate Venture Launchpad 3.0 program (CVL 3.0). Designed to enable corporates and scale-ups to launch new ventures from Singapore, the program provides funding and support to help companies.