Citibank Singapore's chief eyes piece of projected $131 trillion pie in new wealth
Ms Yeo Wenxian, 47, Citi's head of wealth for Asia South, and CEO of Citibank Singapore, at Citi Wealth Hub on April 15. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
SINGAPORE - Citi Wealth anticipates that US$100 trillion (S$131 trillion) of wealth will be created over the next 10 years, with the fastest growth in wealth creation coming from Asia.
Ms Yeo Wenxian, head of wealth for Asia South and chief executive of Citibank Singapore, was speaking to The Straits Times in her first media interview since joining Citi in November 2024.
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
34 minutes ago
- Straits Times
2025 could be the year when AI agents take wing, says futurist
During his recent visit to Singapore, the futurist and world-renowned scenario planner Peter Schwartz wanted to change the arrangements for his return flight. He tried to do it through the Singapore Airlines app, but that didn't work for him. So, he turned to the airline's artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital agent. 'Within seconds, it was able to update my reservation, make the booking and issue me my boarding pass,'' he says. Mr Schwartz, 78, has been working on AI since the 1970s, having written books and even movie scripts about it. Now, as Chief Futures Officer of the customer-relationship management company Salesforce, he is a champion of 'agentic AI' – whereby artificially intelligent agents, acting like virtual humans, can not only make complex decisions, but also act on them. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Business Times
an hour ago
- Business Times
The G7 is at a critical crossroads
THE Group of Seven (G7) could well face an existential crisis at the Kananaskis summit because of US President Donald Trump. Whither the G7? In the 1980s and 1990s, the G7 – led by the US – steered the global economy. But with the rise of emerging market powerhouses, the G7's relative heft declined. The Group of 20's (G20) Pittsburgh summit in September 2009 declared the newer, bigger, broader G20 the premier forum for its leaders' international cooperation, assigning the G7 an informal role. Then, over the following 15 years, the G20 floundered. Economic performance in Russia and Brazil weakened, as did China's subsequently. Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and launched its horrific full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. US-China tensions mounted amid Chinese President Xi Jinping's increased authoritarianism and America's heightened focus on economic statecraft, including the first Trump administration's pursuit of a more protectionist and isolationist course. A reinvigorated role for the G7 As the G20 stumbled, the G7 gathered renewed momentum. It was not a smooth ride, as epitomised by the strained US relations with the rest of the G7 at the 2018 Charlevoix summit, when Trump shamefully disavowed the communique to which all had just agreed and launched verbal attacks on the summit's host, Canada's then-prime minister Justin Trudeau. The administration of former US president Joe Biden, however, helped revive the G7 as a cohesive, democratically aligned forum. The G7 rolled out sanctions on Russia, including blocking US$300 billion in Russian central bank and oligarch assets. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up It helped raise support for Ukraine, including by transferring proceeds from Russia's immobilised assets, although unfortunately failing to seize and send all those Russian holdings to Ukraine. The G7 limited Russian energy revenues, including imposing a price cap on Russia's oil exports. Members worked together on tackling cybersecurity, which would not have been feasible by the G20 given the presence of Russia and China. The G7 adopted a hardened line against China's challenge to Western security. All this cohesion, trust and unity are unravelling as the Jun 15-17 Kananaskis summit approaches. US relations with its longtime allies in Europe have become highly strained. Trump is tearing apart the glue that holds the G7 together, and it now faces the question of whether it can even continue, or function properly, at least, over the next four years while Trump is president. It is hard to reach a positive answer for several reasons. Trump's attacks on the European Union (EU), claiming that the bloc was formed to 'screw' America, fly in the face of transatlantic unity and basic comity, and America's longstanding support for the EU. His tariff threats undermine the liberal trade policies that promoted decades of transatlantic prosperity. He is right in arguing that Europe must do more for itself, especially on defence. But shunning America's closest democratic allies while embracing Russian President Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders undermines the cohesion underpinning the G7's revival. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, always an ardent pro-Atlanticist, shockingly said that his absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible in order to achieve independence from the US, because Americans under this administration are clearly indifferent to the fate of Europe. Other European leaders have echoed his startling remarks. Avoiding a fragmented future Trump seemingly wishes to abandon the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), or disregard its responsibilities. He appears to see little value or have any interest in the G7 as a 'democracy' club, given his support for authoritarians. Indeed, he has again called for Russia to be readmitted to the G7, despite its barbaric war against Ukraine and Putin's dictatorship. Other G7 leaders have rejected Trump's call. Trump has shown utter disregard for Ukraine, even denying that Russia was the aggressor, notwithstanding the rest of the G7's steadfast strong support. His berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, supported by Vice-President JD Vance, sent chills up the backs of European leaders and was quickly rebuffed by them. Trump has turned America's policies on climate change on their head, while Europe continues to do its best to forge ahead. European officials have reservations about trusting and working with Trump's intelligence team. Moreover, Trump's deprecations and disdain for Canadian sovereignty will only exacerbate the underlying tensions surrounding the Kananaskis summit. The foundations supporting the Western alliance, Nato, liberal trade and the G7 – and, frankly, American global leadership – are being torn asunder by the current US administration. Whatever the status of these issues at Kananaskis, enormous damage has been done. The G7 Kananaskis summit may be a frigid affair, even if it is warm and sunny outside. OMFIF The writer is US chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum
Business Times
an hour ago
- Business Times
South-east Asia's tech unicorns may look more like banks in the future
[SINGAPORE] A couple of years ago, banking would not have been the avenue people imagined South-east Asia's tech unicorns would take in pursuit of growth and sustainability. Now, most of South-east Asia's tech unicorns have a bank of sorts under their belt – Grab has GXS Bank in Singapore, GX Bank in Malaysia and Superbank in Indonesia, while Sea has MariBank in Singapore and SeaBank in Indonesia and the Philippines. Sea also operates Ryt Bank as a joint venture with YTL Group. Even GoTo has backed Bank Jago in Indonesia. The banking sector is highly regulated, while tech startups, in contrast, often operate in regulatory grey areas where tech can disrupt current business models. The inroads that these tech-owned banks have made into their markets have been remarkable. For instance, the total deposits for Grab's GXS and GX banks have grown from US$479 million in the first quarter of 2024 to US$1.3 billion in Q1 2025. The three banks owned by Grab are projected to be collectively profitable by Q4 2026, according to Alex Hungate, chief operating officer of Grab. MariBank is also on track for profitability within the Monetary Authority of Singapore's digital bank licence framework of five years from launch. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Given these growth trends, there is potential for banking and financial services to make up the bulk of Sea and Grab's businesses. Currently, financial services make up 9.6 per cent of Grab's total revenue for Q1 2025, and 16.2 per cent of Sea's Q1 2025 revenue. These numbers can quickly multiply, as Grab and Sea ramp up their banking operations in emerging markets such as Indonesia. Almost half of all adults in that country are unbanked or underbanked, and about 36 million adults remain unbanked in the Philippines. Running their banks as digital banks has helped to cut costs in serving unbanked and underbanked customers. Technology is making risk management processes such as know-your-customer and credit modelling – in an environment where information is not readily available – cheaper compared with traditional banks. The opportunities in South-east Asia also include the many micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) that Grab and Sea's banks serve. Traditional banks incur high costs to serve this segment of business customers. Meanwhile, the new digital banks by Grab and Sea have also utilised technology to serve their retail customers, thus bringing costs down. It also helps that some of the MSME customers are also Grab or Sea merchants, allowing their banks to access data that traditional banks would not be privy to. The number of orders on Grab's food-delivery platform and Sea's Shopee platform gives the tech unicorns an edge in understanding these customers' monthly cash flow and business performance. Rising interest rates in the last few years have also allowed digital banks to make money off deposits. Coupled with this edge that Grab and Sea have over traditional banks, the foundation has been laid for their banking businesses to potentially overtake the original business units in terms of revenue. Grab's mobility and food-delivery businesses are highly dependent on the human factor, given the involvement of drivers, riders and food merchants. Similarly, Sea's Shopee business is equally dependent on merchants being willing to continue to sell on the platform. This is a factor that both Grab and Sea have less control over; they can influence such actors with incentives and subsidies, but this may result in inefficiencies. In conventional banking, once a customer is acquired, there is a level of stickiness that comes with participating in financial services transactions. This is unlike customers of delivery and ride-hailing services, who are driven by the lowest price, or with the riders, who may jump ship once the commission percentage changes. Grab and Sea would also wield more control over the supply side of the equation, compared with ride-hailing or e-commerce. With these factors in mind, it will pay to watch this space, to see if the next incarnation of Grab and Sea will be as banks rather than tech players.
