Kasikornbank (KBank) expects to grow 28% year-on-year for high net worth individual (HNWI) fee income, dramatically higher than its 15% target.
The aggressive growth is supported by high demand for financial advisory services, which was previously driven by under-served customers.
The strong performance of global investment markets and the bank's innovative investment products and services will also contribute to the growth, said Jirawat Supornpaibul, head of private banking business.
But the bank projects a lower growth rate for its fee-based income business in 2018 (in the vicinity of 11%), because of a high base effect.
Apart from asset management services, KBank's private banking business also offers family wealth planning and non-capital market investment services. There is also strong demand for legal and tax planning, given the government's tax reforms. The bank has provided the service to 300 of 4,000 high net worth client families.
Recently, the bank helped two property developers, Ananda Property and Origin Property, offering preferred shares to 50 individual investors.
The shares were cumulatively worth 1.3 billion baht and were linked to four real estate projects.
On the asset management side, KBank focuses on both emerging markets and developed markets. For example, the bank plans to invest in global arbitrage funds, global hybrid funds and global private equity funds next year. Some of these funds use big data and machine learning to allocate assets, he said.
Mr Jirawat said the bank set up a private banking business team for high net worth Chinese customers and presented a marketing campaign to the first 50 of them. The company plans to build up its business team and expand the customer segments it covers. There are roughly 10 million Chinese nationals working and investing in Thailand.
"Moving forward, cross-selling strategies with Chinese businesses will generate opportunities. We aim to be the best private banker for Chinese clients, and the pioneer in this market segment," he said.
KBank is the country's fourth-largest lender with 744 billion baht in assets under management (AUM), down 2% from last year. The reduction was caused by lower deposits in line with the deposit rate cut. But the bank expects its AUM to climb to 750 billion baht by the end of the year.
The bank plans to increase its HNWI client base from 9,800 last year to 10,500 (which accounts for 34% of the market) by year-end. Kasikorn Research Center predicts 38,000 HNWI in Thailand by 2018, up 1% from 2017.