The firm’s group president Kenny Lam revealed that the firm is looking at expanding into Singapore, where it believes high net worth clients are increasingly interested in investing in China.
“There is an increasing client need [for wealth management] in Singapore. We also see Chinese living in Southeast Asia who want to invest money in China.”
However, he added his team is cautious in deciding where to establish an office. “We are not trying to be in every location globally,” he said.
Early this year, the firm set up offices in Vancouver and Melbourne to offer local high net worth individuals its wealth management services.
The firm has been building a client base of overseas Chinese, but Lam said it also has interest from domestic non-Chinese investors in Canada and Australia.
“Investing in China is not only attractive to the overseas Chinese community but also to domestic investors as a whole. On this investment idea, we are closely working with some local family offices in Vancouver and Melbourne,” said Lam.
The news comes two days after Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission fined the firm HK$5m ($640,000, €553,026, £482,171) for failure to comply with several requirements, including know-your-client and due diligence matters.
Profit up 24%
The Shanghai-headquartered wealth manager reported a 23.7% increase in its quarterly net income during the first quarter in 2018, driven by asset management unit, called Gopher Asset Management, and other financial services, management said during the annual financial results call today.
During the first quarter, its wealth management business, accounting for roughly 70% of total revenue, was up only 5.7% to RMB 594.2m ($92.4m) while the asset management segment grew 53.8% to RMB 194.3m.
Net revenue from one-time commissions for wealth management service was down 7.7% to RMB 316m due to a decline in transaction value, the firm said.
Noah overall results (US dollar)
| Q1 | Y-O-Y | |
| Net revenue | 70.8m | 13.7% |
| Net income | 42.8m | 23.7% |
Source: Company statement. Noah also operates other businesses such as an online payment service and insurance brokerage.
Noah’s CEO Wang Jingbo said investment sentiment underwent a shift at the beginning of the year compared with 2017.
“In the first quarter, the volatility in the capital market in China stepped up. Some corporate debt defaults also dampened the overall investment sentiment. It is expected that high net worth clients have been negatively impacted in the short term.”
At the end of March, the total number of clients was 196,927, up 32.6% from a year ago. The number of active clients, who purchased investment products at least once during the first quarter, grew to 5,449 from 4,362 over the same period in 2017.
Noah forecasted that annual net income for full year 2018 will be in a range of RMB 1bn to RMB 1.05bn, which represents a year-on-year increase of 16.7%-22.6%.
