Tokyo (SCCIJ) – UBS and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust have started operating their groundbreaking wealth management joint venture UBS SuMi Trust Wealth Management with offices in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. The Swiss banking group is the first foreign financial services company to offer global securities and wealth management capabilities together with the custody, real estate, inheritance, and wealth transfer expertise of a Japanese trust banking group.
UBS has started operating the first joint venture of a foreign bank with a Japanese trust bank in the field of wealth management (© UBS SuMi Trust).
Two years of preparation
The Swiss and Japanese financial groups had jointly announced the genesis of their wealth management alliance in early June 2019. Soon thereafter, the two groups established a consultation and event organizing company to identify prospective new clients and also began cross-selling each other’s products into their respective client bases.
Next, the two groups established UBS SuMi Trust Wealth Advisory in June 2020, which is equally capitalized by UBS Securities Japan and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings for marketing activities such as consulting and organizing events for new clients under the new brand “UBS SuMi TRUST”.
Concurrently UBS and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust also worked hand-in-hand structuring and licensing UBS SuMi Trust Wealth Management so it could deliver a uniquely broad and relevant portfolio of benefits to high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients in Japan. The joint venture company was carved out from UBS Securities Japan. UBS holds 51% and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust 49% of the shares.
“Multiplying success”
The new company marries the Swiss insights and 150-year-plus traditions of UBS with the power, scale, and knowledge of Japan’s premier trust banking group. The Japanese partner of the Swiss banking group expects to realize unique “Total Wealth Management” services which provide excellent products for all wealth management clients, on an equal scale with the world’s other private banking markets, in a truly holistic offering.
“We knew that with a powerful partner specialized in this unique trust banking market, we could multiply the success we have already achieved organically to date in Japan,” said Victor Chang, President and Representative Director of the new company and head of UBS’s wealth management efforts in Japan to date.
He added, “No other wealth manager in Japan boasts the same breadth and depth of our services, not to mention global reach. We are convinced that the legacy clients of UBS and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust, as well as an enormous market of untapped wealthy individuals, will place considerable value on this unique service portfolio.”
Text: SCCIJ with material of UBS and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust
