Where private capital is moving, and what it means for a private client

The centres where internationally mobile wealth is held have shifted substantially in a decade, for reasons that have nothing to do with investment returns. The reasons matter, because they determine what you can actually do at each.

What drove the shift

• Automatic exchange of information, which removed confidentiality as a product and left service and access as the differentiators.
• De-risking. International banks exited whole categories of client and country to reduce compliance exposure, which closed doors that had nothing to do with the individual.
• Sanctions regimes, which made nationality a banking variable in a way it had not been.
• Minimum balances rising at private banks, pushing a large tier of clients out of relationships they had held for years.

Where it went

• Switzerland remains the largest centre and is now a service and stability proposition rather than a secrecy one, with high minimums.
• Singapore and Hong Kong absorbed a substantial share of Asian and, latterly, other wealth, with Singapore's family office regime being the visible instrument.
• The Emirates built the DIFC and ADGM as common law financial centres and attracted both institutions and family offices, which is why the banking experience there has changed materially in five years.
• Luxembourg and Ireland for fund structures rather than for private accounts.
• The United States, which does not participate in the common reporting standard and has therefore become an inbound centre, with its own separate reporting framework.

What it means for you

• Access follows connection. Every one of these centres prefers clients with a reason to be there — residence, business, a family office.
• Minimums are real. Below them the offering is retail, wherever the brochure was printed.
• Nationality determines the shortlist more than wealth does, which is uncomfortable and true.
• Confidentiality is not the product any more. Anyone selling it is selling something that does not exist, and usually to people who would be better served by ordinary compliance.