Wealth managers are increasingly letting the next generation of Asia’s wealthy “call the shots” in how to manage their money, amid an intergenerational wealth transfer that could shift as much as $5.8 trillion in assets by 2030.
Previously, Asia’s rich were “typically very busy with business, so they looked to bankers to help them manage their wealth,” Alice Tan, head of group wealth management for Malaysian bank Maybank, tells Fortune.
The next generation, however, usually has an overseas education and comfort with financial instruments. “Some are even the chief investment officer in their family offices,” Tan says.
Wealth management providers are thus taking a step back, allowing younger clientele to “call the shots,” and instead engaging them in “healthy, intellectual discussions” on finance.
Maybank is new to the wealth management space, establishing its private banking wing in 2013. Tan joined a year later, after stints at investment firms like Coutts & Co and Credit Suisse. Tan says she was drawn by the “opportunity to build something,” particularly at a bank that had already achieved success in wholesale and commercial banking, yet lagged behind in serving high-net-worth individuals.
With 2024 revenue of $15.1 billion, Maybank is No. 19 on the Fortune Southeast Asia 500 list, which measures the region’s largest companies by revenue. It’s also the highest ranked country from Malaysia on the list.
Today, the bank has an expansive suite of wealth management options, with Tan overseeing its privilege wealth, premier wealth, private wealth and Islamic wealth segments.
With total assets of $240 billion, it is also Southeast Asia’s largest Islamic bank, and sits within the top five of the world’s largest Islamic finance institutions.
Skyrocketing growth in Southeast Asia
While Maybank operates throughout Southeast Asia, the bank is concentrated in three markets: Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Tan is “definitely bullish” on Southeast Asia’s economy, citing a young population and consistent economic growth.
The bank is also a major provider of Islamic finance, or products that comply with Islamic religious principles. Yet Maybank executives note that non-Muslims are interested in Islamic finance, with then-Maybank Islamic CEO Dato’ Muzaffar Hisham telling Fortune in 2024 that more than half of the bank’s Islamic banking customers in Malaysia were ethnic Chinese.
Maybank was also the first bank to offer end-to-end Islamic wealth solutions in Singapore.
Islamic banking is a financial system based on Islamic law, or shariah, which avoids interest and excessive speculation while focusing on ethical investments and asset-backed transactions. Islamic wealth management, for example, tries to manage wealth according to Islamlic principles, such as by including principles like zakat, the Islamic principle of charity, into its funds.
a Shariah-compliant method of helping high-net-worth individuals grow their finances, is a key pillar of that. It involves five key concepts: the creation, accumulation, preservation, purification and distribution of wealth.
“We don’t think that Islamic wealth management is only for Muslims,” Tan tells Fortune. “A lot of it is about values and doing good, so it attracts a wider crowd and appeals especially to the young.”
Tan hopes that Maybank can deepen its wealth management business in Cambodia and the Philippines, building off its existing wholesale banking infrastructure. Cambodia’s banking landscape is in its “infancy,” she said, adding that she wants Maybank to be one of the first institutions to offer wealth management products there.
Tan is also eyeing other high-growth markets in Asia, like Vietnam and Greater China. “We want to be firmly established as a leading ASEAN financial institution and wealth provider,” she says.
