E.Sun
E.Sun Commercial Bank has received praise for its efforts in providing high-end banking services to Taiwan’s army of small and medium-sized enterprises – the lifeblood of this island economy. But the mid-sized private lender also deserves plaudits for the speed with which it has become an important player in the fast-growing world of private banking.
E.Sun has opted for a thoroughly different approach here, paying its sales team a yearly bonus rather than incentivizing them with commissions – a strategy that, the bank believes, avoids potential mis-selling. It loudly trumpets equal opportunities – an attitude that seems to work: in the four years to the end of 2015, its private banking division saw fee income grow at a compound annual rate of 35% – faster than any of its peers.
More specifically, over the same period, the bank’s wealth management fee income expanded at a compound rate of 37.5%, transforming E.Sun into one of Taiwan’s top three private banks.
Despite market volatility and recent rule changes that crimped growth across the wealth-management sector, E.Sun still saw fee income grow by 12.4% in 2016. And still the bank continues to innovate, rolling out customized cross-border private banking services to its VIP customers – anyone with personal liquid assets of more than $10 million – while finding new ways to extend well-packaged services to its younger and mass-affluent clientele.