Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia
Private banking is a minority pursuit in a frontier market lacking a deep seam of wealthy customers. But it’s growing, with banks preferring in the main to focus on priority banking services that target the reasonably prosperous.
Popular services include platinum and gold credit cards, asset protection and insurance, safe-deposit box services, gold trading and investment advice.
Khan Bank offers an excellent suite of priority banking services, as do Arig Bank, XacBank and Golomt Bank.
But this award goes to Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia. The country’s largest and best corporate lender also has the largest and best onshore priority banking service, controlling around 20% of the market.
TDB was the first onshore lender to offer such services, way back in 2004. Its client roster has grown slowly but surely ever since, to around 300 people, each with personal assets of at least $200,000.
TDB’s executive vice-chairman and president Randolph Koppa says it will remain focused on providing priority banking services to wealthy customers in just one city, the capital Ulaan Bataar, via two dedicated private banking offices.
Mongolia is a small economy where wealth remains highly concentrated in the hands of a few individuals. But as its economy grows, the market’s population of mass-affluent customers will too – and that is when the competition will really heat up.