INTERVIEW OF HUBERT MUSSEAU

What sets you apart from your peers this year and why ? 

H.M. BNP Paribas Wealth Management is a major private bank, #1 in the Eurozone and in the top 10 worldwide. We are present in four hubs in Europe, Middle East, Asia and the US. With €380 billion of assets under management as of September 2020 and 6,800 professionals, BNP Paribas wealth management  provide clientele with solutions to protect, grow and transfer their wealth. Clients benefit from our integrated, diversified business model with opportunities to benefit from the entire added value of the BNP Paribas Group (mainly Corporate and Institutional Bank, Real Estate, and Asset Management). Established in Switzerland since 1872, our Bank has solid foundations and a strong expertise in the Swiss Wealth Management of private clients.

How have your colleagues contributed towards the success of your organization?

H.M. The success of the organization can be attributed to the quality of the teams, their expertise, commitment, values and hard work. Even more this year, I have to say how proud I am of the incredible dedication to our clients that our teams have shown during this crisis. We changed our ways of working, adopted new solutions to stay in touch, and ensured our clients continued to receive the highest level of service that they expect from us. Collectively, we all worked together as a team to stay close to our clients during this unprecedented period in our lives.

What are you going to do to stay on the front foot in a fast-growing but also challenging region such as this?

H.M. Our priorities are: Focus on client expectations, leverage our expertise across the entire BNP Paribas Group and accelerate our digital transformation.

First, we work with clients to adapt our offer to meet their demands, such as in the field of impact investments. We want to help them to align their wealth with their values for a positive impact. It will be a long journey and we want to be there at every step to accompany them, to support them and to have a serious and a robust approach.

Secondly, we work with the other divisions of the group in order to leverage expertise from across all business lines. It allows us a deep understanding of the most relevant issues for clients, and help us address both the concerns of a private client as well as the more institutional concerns.

Finally, the digital transformation of our business is accelerating.  For some years now, we have co-created digital solutions with our clients. We work continuously to innovate and take advantage of technology to better support and serve our clients. The health crisis has accelerated their digital expectations resulting in an increased use of key digital solutions.

What have been the challenges you have to overcome to reach such a standard?

H.M. The challenges we have been facing are, a low rate environment, a rising volatility and changes in the regulatory environment surrounded by an unprecedented sanitary crisis. The mission of BNP Paribas Wealth Management has always been to transform complex challenges into opportunities. This is what we do for our clients every day.

Our clients' investment and business decisions can have a positive impact around them. When we combine our individual and collective expertise with our clients’ potential for impact, we can build a sustainable and harmonious future for all stakeholders. To achieve this, BNP Paribas Wealth Management continues to strengthen its offer of sustainable and impact investments.

• The myImpact digital tool offers each client the opportunity, through an interactive journey to be carried out alone or with his private advisor, to raise his awareness on sustainable finance and to define his social and environmental priorities. With the gathered information, the private banker can work out a strategy with his client and propose adapted solutions which meet her/his values and priorities.
• Our in-house sustainability rating methodology, or "Clover Methodology", assesses the sustainability of investment products across most asset classes. Mastering the rating process is the best way to avoid green-washing and to guarantee our clients that we only propose sustainable investment products that meet the highest standards.Thanks to those ratings, we can provide our clients with a sustainability report that analyzes their investments under a sustainability angle, highlighting potential gaps between their investments and their ESG preferences. We can then advise them to create a portfolio aligned with their convictions.It is a game-changing approach that anticipates upcoming regulatory changes and positions' us at the forefront of the private banking industry.

With this journey, we provide our clients with positive impact solutions across all the asset classes and all the services, enabling them to give a purpose to their investments.

Whom do you look to for inspiration and ideas?

H.M. We believe our clients have the extraordinary power to impact the world. So yes, our first inspiration comes from our clients themselves. Since 2019, we have engaged into a continuous quality improvement loop involving our clients directly.

Based on the Net Promoter Score®, we are collecting hundreds of feedbacks on how to improve our services and convert them into concrete actions plans. They all have different outlooks, but frequently they share a number of common interests and concerns.

Another source of inspiration is society itself and how it is evolving. Our investment strategy team is monitoring changes in order to identify new trends (digitalisation, climate change, demographics…) and transform them into investment thematic solutions such as our 10 investment themes for 2021.

What do you hope will be the result this accolade and how does it help your business in the region?

H.M. We are very proud to have received this award especially this year and we believe in its prestige in our wealth management industry. This prize rewards and acknowledges the hard work put in by our teams and is an endorsement of our strategy. It encourages us to continue to work hard on behalf of all our clients.  It is another testament to our strategic growth plan, our vision and purpose.  It is the sort of reward that drives our ambition to be the best every year and pushes us to always strive for excellence.