Oriental Securities: Wealth management has a better foundation for leading brokerage firms with asset management advantages throughout the life cycle
The Zhitong Finance App learned that Orient Securities released a research report saying that the wealth management industry is currently undergoing a deep transformation from channel-type trading services to customer asset management throughout the life cycle. UBS's experience shows that two-way collaboration between investment banks and wealth management can connect corporate capital needs with individual and family wealth needs, and help improve clients' asset retention and comprehensive income for individual customers. Leading domestic brokerage firms with strong customer reserves, complete investment bank underwriting capabilities, rich product supply systems, and forward-looking cross-border layout also have the foundation to promote wealth management transformation and expand revenue from comprehensive financial services.
Orient Securities's main views are as follows:
Client asset expansion is a core driver of UBS Wealth Management's long-term growth
From 2004 to 2025, UBS's global wealth management investment assets increased from US$1.5 trillion to US$4.8 trillion; in 2025, the wealth management sector's revenue reached US$26 billion, contributing 52.4% of the Group's revenue. Judging from profit characteristics, UBS Wealth Management's comprehensive income ratio (wealth management income/average investment assets) has stabilized at around 0.6% in recent years. The size of customer assets is still the main foundation for long-term revenue and profit growth. Recurring revenue accounts for a relatively high proportion, and business stability is relatively strong.
The diverse and comprehensive needs of the high-net-worth customer base to build a cross-line integrated service foundation
High-net-worth groups such as entrepreneurs and family offices simultaneously have three types of complex financial needs: individuals, families, and enterprises, opening up business boundaries for comprehensive services throughout the wealth management chain. The customer base's demand has broken through the traditional asset allocation category and extended to diverse scenarios such as corporate investment and financing, equity management, liquidity coordination, and family wealth inheritance. UBS relies on global brand barriers, strong capital strength, global service networks and local professional teams to meet complex and comprehensive needs, and uses wealth management as a long-term customer relationship maintenance hub to open up collaborative operations in investment banking, asset management, credit, and family service lines to improve customer asset retention and comprehensive income for individual customers.
The “One Firm” collaborative model provides two-way referrals to continuously increase customer asset share and individual customer value
On the one hand, after reaching out to entrepreneurial customers, investment banks can channel the individual and family needs of actual controllers and managers to the wealth management sector; on the other hand, wealth management teams can tap enterprise-side needs such as mergers and acquisitions, financing, and liquidity management from a stock of high-net-worth customers and transfer them in reverse to investment banking professional teams. Looking at the revenue structure, in 2025, UBS Wealth Management's net income from recurring fees accounted for 52.7%. Net interest income and transactional revenue contributed 27.0% and 20.1% respectively. Multiple revenue sources effectively increased customer asset retention rates and individual customer comprehensive revenue.
Under the trend of investment in science and innovation, leading domestic brokerage firms can draw on the “three investment linkage” coordination mechanism to promote wealth transformation using the entrepreneurial customer base
UBS relies on global outlets, a comprehensive banking business foundation, and the barriers of century-old brand building, which is difficult to replicate in the short term. However, its mature mechanism of unified customer view, two-way transfer of wealth from investment banks, cross-team collaboration, and hierarchical and refined services has strong reference value for domestic brokers' wealth transformation. Leading domestic brokerage firms can rely on the “three investment linkage” system to establish entrepreneurial customer relationships in advance, and extend comprehensive enterprise services to the personal and family wealth side of actual controllers in key capital operation nodes such as IPOs, refinancing, shareholder holdings reduction, and family inheritance; first open up customer relationships and internal organizational mechanisms, then gradually build investment fee systems and supplement cross-border wealth service capabilities.
Risk Alerts
Large fluctuations in capital markets led to a decline in the size of clients' assets; wealth management transformation and buyers' investment development fell short of expectations; cross-departmental collaboration and organizational mechanism reforms fell short of expectations; differences between overseas experience and domestic regulation and customer needs; and cross-border business development and compliance risks exceeded expectations.