What makes the KBL European Bankers network unique?
We think that the personality of each member is the key to the success of our concept of a network of private banks. Because we want to be Belgian in Belgium, Dutch in the Netherlands and English in England, each member of the KBL European Private Bankers network has a great degree of autonomy in drawing up its own marketing strategy. These private banks on a human scale work under their own name and with their own culture.
So, in all the countries where we have an operation, our guarantee of long-term success rests on the signature, history and reputation of each of the members of our network and on the entrepreneurial spirit of our private bankers.
At a marketing level, we want to offer a solution adapted to the needs of a significant client base in Europe through our network of local private banks. This concept, which is unique on the European continent, stresses closeness and the respecting of cultures and identities. We place the customer at the centre of our activities and provide him with tailor made solutions.
What is the key element in your strategy?
The private banker is the key element in our strategy. First and foremost our 485 private bankers across the whole of Europe are trustworthy men and women who build up long-term relationships with their clients and look at managing their wealth from this perspective.
During this period of financial turmoil, doesn’t this strategy run the risk of being questioned?
No, quite the opposite. In these troubled times on financial markets, our private bankers must, now more than ever, be trusted advisers, very close to their clients. In our KBL European Private Bankers network, dialogue with the client remains our priority, especially in these difficult times.
Since September 15, 2008 and the bankruptcy of the US bank Lehman Brothers, all the traditional landmarks for investors have disappeared. The role of each of our private bankers is all the more important since the client is looking for a new landmark in the current environment. Today our mission is more than providing traditional advice and aims to reassure, accompany, explain and find, for our client, financial solutions adapted to the current environment. Even the idea of service has changed since the crisis.
In the same context, we are asserting ourselves as trusted investors for our clients. Our independence in our investment choice is guaranteed by our tried and tested strategy of open architecture for each asset class. All the investment strategies suggested to our clients are analysed in depth, taking account of the investment’s potential performance and the particular risk profile of the client.
How do you get your staff involved in this original strategy that you have developed?
That’s simple; we are positioning ourselves as trusted employers. We offer a career to all private bankers who make a difference in their work and to all banking professionals who optimise the work and performance of our private bankers.
What, in your opinion, are the main assets of KBL European Private Bankers?
To succeed in this business, it’s not enough just to be there or even be proactive, you have to have solid advantages. As I’ve just been explaining, our number one strength is our staff. Whatever their role or function within our network of private bankers, we single out their entrepreneurial talent both for helping clients achieve their objectives and for injecting enthusiasm into our private banks and consequently ensuring their future.
But KBL European Private Bankers assets don’t stop there. The European private bankers in the KBL network benefit from a Hub Service Centre located in the Luxembourg headquarters. Consequently we offer all the members of KBL European Private Bankers a top-quality administrative support service, from the monitoring of client transactions to their conclusion using the latest tools available. To this we can add an efficient IT infrastructure which relieves the various banks in our network of certain arduous administrative operations and allows them to devote themselves to their commercial development and the service of our clients.
Finally, in Luxembourg, we have a second core business closely linked to the specific nature of the financial centre. Here we have developed our Global Investor Services (GIS) business which plays a supporting role to private banking in addition to its role as counterparty to external clients. These fields of activity are essentially those linked to the undertakings for collective investments industry in which Luxembourg is the unrivalled European leader, to market activities and portfolio management in the broadest sense of the term, for professional and institutional clients.
KBL European Private Bankers has a strong presence in the west but is also starting to open up in countries in the east.
Absolutely, after targeting the countries of western Europe (Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Monaco) our network of private bankers intends to expand, once the financial crisis has passed, into central and eastern Europe to spread our reputation as a European private banker.
We chose Poland as our first venture and we opened a private bank there in April 2009. KBL European Private Bankers Polska is the first onshore pure-play private bank on the Polish market. By pure play I mean that our sole business is private banking. Onshore means that we are dealing solely with the Polish market. Our aim is to offer our Polish clients specialist services with the highest standards of quality to be found in Western Europe but on their doorstep in Poland.
This does not prevent you having ambitions in the west?
In fact it would be better to say the south, since we shall be opening our new subsidiary in Spain this coming April. We have been lucky in finding a genuine private banker who is going to be able to enlarge his client base with the help of our group. We have confidence in this market in south-west Europe which just needs developing. Spain is a very dynamic country and our operation there is fully justified.
Isn’t it dangerous to open a bank, no matter how small it might be, at the present time?
No, and there are several reasons for this. Our network’s strategy is clear and we have no liquidity problems. We are concentrating exclusively on private banking and our sole ambition is to grow the assets entrusted to us. What’s more, for our operations in Spain and Poland, we are starting from scratch. We don’t have a reputation to defend, but rather one to build. This subtle nuance is all the more important now when financial institutions are being judged on their past mistakes above all.
Today our mission is more than traditional advice. It is to reassure, accompany, explain and find, for our client, financial solutions adapted to the current environment.
You are not lacking in ambition.
it’s true that KBL European Private Bankers is not lacking in ambition. We are currently about to join up with a new financial partner dedicated to supporting the development of our business model that I’ve just been describing and I am very confident about our future.
Our organisational model has proved both its viability and its profitability and as they say in the world of sport: You don’t change a winning team