The large Spanish banks are strongly committed to developing and expanding their private banking services, which are those offered to their best customers. This concept of banking service is in full evolution to stop being something elitist, reserved only for high net worth individuals, and to open up to all those clients who need more specialized advice for managing their finances. Private banks manage assets in Spain for a value of 630,000 million euros.
Proof of the growing interest of the large banks in private banking customers is the great leap that Banco Sabadell has taken in this segment, since it has gone from 30,000 to 93,000 customers. “Thanks to the intelligence of quality data we have been able to have a better knowledge of clients and understand more precisely who needs and values the advice of their financial wealth.” This is stated by Xavier Blanquet, Deputy General Manager of Banco Sabadell and Business Director of Sabadell Urquijo Private Banking.
“There is a lot of competition between the big banks to attract potential private banking clients,” says Francisco Ambrós, a partner at Deloitte. Clients usually already have a trusting relationship established with their entity and tend to be very loyal, so efforts to attract new clients become increasingly sophisticated. ”Because they are clients who have already established a relationship of trust with their entity and are used to being very loyal”.
Samanta Judez, Managing Director of the advertising agency DBB Spain affirms that the greater general financial education of the population also explains the increase in clients in the private banking segment, since it allows better knowledge and management of their own finances. “We live in a fast-paced world and the investment context is constantly changing. Clients, she affirms, are asking more and more questions and need the appropriate advice. It must be taken into account that financial products evolve a lot and are increasingly sophisticated. That makes the need for help that customers have even greater.”
He adds that private banking services are growing in parallel to the increasing digitization of the basic banking service for the majority of customers who, normally, have enough self-management to meet their needs. Private banking is focused on those who, beyond a matter of wealth, need specific advice for their investment concerns. The private banking client is no longer identified only with high net worth, but is someone who is restless in financial matters.
Francisco Ambrós, a partner at Deloitte, believes that private banking currently requires in-depth knowledge of the current and future needs of clients and this can only be achieved to the extent that the client is placed at the center of all decisions. .
Alvaro Marín, head of Behavioral Science at The Cocktail Analysis, a company specializing in consumer knowledge, points out that private banking adapts to the sociological evolution of society, which has become more open and plural. In this regard, for example, many financial decisions today are made as a couple and you have to think about complete advice for the family unit. In this regard, Álvaro Marín highlights that the world is increasingly feminine due to the greater economic, cultural and social role of women.
Samanta Judez says that clients, from a certain level, want to have the figure of a banker -or wealth manager- to help and advise them in an increasingly changing and complex world.
Based on sociological evolution, explains Francisco Ambrós, banks divide their clients into the retail sector, which is the general clientele, the personal banking sector and the private banking sector. The latter covers the needs with a global vision of their wealth, who buy sophisticated savings products such as funds, structured products, savings insurance or alternative investment and also require additional services such as tax advice.
In short, private banking, adds Álvaro Marín, involves hyper-specialization in wealth management. Clients in this segment want to surround themselves with good experts, good bankers, to whom they trust their money, and for this they demand an exquisite and agile service, loyalty, commitment, trust and, of course, confidentiality. It is as if they were looking for a guardian angel for their money, with whom they could establish a very close human and professional bond, who could accompany and guide them in good times as well as in bad times. Customers also increasingly value the fact of being able to access the financial products of their choice regardless of what each bank may have.
“Banks – points out Xavier Blanquet in this regard – pay a lot of attention to the training and selection of good bankers to work in the private banking area. The bar is very high. It requires excellent financial training, you must be a technically very good professional, with great empathy and willingness to serve. It is the point of contact of the clients with the entity”.
He also explains that at Banco Sabadell they have made a great effort to train bankers capable of serving private banking customers and, in addition, they maintain a very demanding continuous training plan. "We already had many people prepared to offer quality advice in private banking and that is what has allowed us to make the great leap that we have made in clients and bankers together with a complete review of the offer and of the services," he adds.
The key to a bank's success in its private banking services lies precisely in the quality and proximity of its bankers, since this is the way to generate authentic value experiences for customers, explains Francisco Ambrós. The banker's job should be to help his client form an opinion about what is good for him.
Xavier Blanquet adds that it is very important to understand what type of relationship the client wants: advice in which the banker makes the recommendations and the client decides whether the client prefers to delegate the management of his assets or part of it through a management contract. discretionary portfolios.
New technologies and Artificial Intelligence provide more elements that help decision-making and access to new markets. Francisco Ambrós, for example, points out that through 'tokenization' access to multiple assets will be facilitated. "New horizons are opening up that require more specialized advice," he adds.
The five big Spanish banks are the ones that dominate the private banking market, a long way from independent financial advisors. There are two reasons that explain this fact. The first is that customers want the security that big banks offer and their ability to offer a complete banking service as well. The other factor that gives big banks an advantage is that data and technology are increasingly important for private banking and this requires a high investment that is only within the reach of entities that have a minimum of critical mass.
