More Assets Under Private Banking Management

After a slowdown last year, the growth of assets under management at domestic private banking service providers has picked up again this year, exceeding HUF 8,600 billion by the end of June. However, the growth of customer accounts does not show such a positive picture.

Domestic providers remain pessimistic about the risks to private banking assets, with the latest Portfolio Private Banking Survey showing that providers are also concerned about the capital market environment, the state of the Hungarian economy and the income situation of companies and households. OTP Private Banking still has the largest assets under management, but MBH is firmly in second place after the mergers, and K&H has also surprised.

Last year, a volatile market environment, recession fears, geopolitical conflicts and a weak forint continued throughout the year, and all of this had an impact on the assets under management at domestic private banking providers: compared to previous years, 2022 saw more subdued asset growth.

This year, however, in a more favorable market environment, the growth of private banking assets exceeded last year's figures already in the first half of the year: by the end of June, assets under management at domestic private banking service providers amounted to HUF 8,660 billion, an increase of more than 9% in one year and nearly 6% in six months.

As assets under management have risen, so too have the assets per client account, which reached a new record of HUF 150 million in the first half of this year. In addition to the asset growth, the new record is also due to the fact that client accounts grew at a much slower pace than assets.

The ranking of providers with the highest entry threshold has not changed: Bank Gutmann has the highest entry threshold with HUF 379 million, followed by Erste Private Banking, now with HUF 150 million, and then Concorde Securities, where HUF 120 million is required to become a private banking client.

The lowest entry threshold is set for OTP Digital Private Bank clients, with a threshold of EUR 20 million.

In terms of assets per client account, Bank Gutmann boasts the highest average assets of well over HUF 1 billion, followed by Hold Fund Management with HUF 376 million and Concorde Securities with HUF 332 million.

While last year the growth in private banking client accounts was impressive, this year the same cannot be said: the number of client accounts has practically stagnated in the last six months, but even on a year-on-year basis the growth is modest, not even reaching 2%.