India's wealth managers buck the Asia trend with 18% asset growth

India’s wealth managers saw a rise in assets under management (AUM) in 2018, bucking a slowing trend in most of Asia, according to a survey by Asian Private Banker.

The top 20 wealth firms in India expanded their AUM by 18 per cent over the previous year to $193 billion, the report published on Monday showed. In contrast, assets at the 20 largest private banks across the whole of Asia fell 3.6 per cent as market turbulence deterred rich clients from deploying their wealth, according to an APB survey in April.

Domestic asset managers continued to expand their hold on the market, accounting for about 78 per cent of the top 20’s AUM last year, versus 64 per cent in 2015, according to the survey.

The wealth management arm of Kotak Mahindra Bank retained the top slot in India, boosting AUM to $33.6 billion, the report showed. BNP Paribas SA kept its leading position among foreign wealth managers in India with total assets of $13.8 billion last year.

There were a total of 3,564 wealth managers at India’s top 20 firms last year, Asian Private Banker said, yielding an average $54 million of AUM per individual. That’s a tiny fraction of the average $882 million handled by each wealth manager at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., as disclosed in APB’s earlier survey.