Battle for your wealth: S’pore banks step up fight to woo affluent clients

Résumé détaillé

From wooing the mass affluent to courting billionaires, Singapore’s banks are fighting harder than ever for a slice of the nation’s growing wealth.

For Mui Cher, a third-generation leader of her family’s import-export business, disciplined saving had long been her way of building wealth.

But as the cost of living rose, money sitting idle in her bank account no longer felt like it was keeping pace. That pressure is familiar to many Singaporeans, whatever the size of their savings.

This prompted her to start investing. As a customer of DBS Treasures, DBS Bank’s wealth management service for the affluent, she has a dedicated relationship manager who walks her through a broad range of investment products. She now invests across different risk levels, with her relationship manager helping her navigate the choices.

Mui Cher, who is in her 30s, is the kind of customer that Singapore’s banks are increasingly fighting to win as they extend their services further down the wealth ladder to reach the mass affluent – professionals and entrepreneurs with money to invest, even if these people have yet to join the millionaires’ club.

The banks are chasing a pool of money that keeps growing. Singapore households’ combined net worth rose 7.3% year on year to $3.3 trillion at the end of 2025, according to the Singapore Department of Statistics.

Combined household wealth continued to grow in the first half of 2026, reaching $3.4 trillion by the end of June.

Together, the households held $714 billion in cash and deposits as at June 2026, up 5% from a year earlier. This excludes wealth held in property, Central Provident Fund savings, life insurance, stocks and other investments.

More money has been pouring into the banking system. Total deposits grew 7.6% year on year in June 2026, according to data from DBS and economic database CEIC. Most of that growth came from residents, while non-residents contributed 2.3 percentage points.

Part of the wealth arriving from abroad belongs to the world’s wealthiest families. The number of single-family offices awarded tax incentives by the Monetary Authority of Singapore grew from about 400 in 2020 to…

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