Financial intermediaries (FIMs) – aka independent asset managers – want to explore new markets and strategic partnerships this year, according to a survey. It drew views from 90 of these institutions and client-facing professionals across Singapore, Greater China and Dubai.
FIMs serve high net worth individuals, family offices and institutional investors.
Bank of Singapore said that assets under management for its FIM clients – one of the fast-growing segments in its business – increased by more than 30 per cent last year.
The survey, carried out between November last year and January 2026, found that slightly more than half of the respondents said they would look at new markets and at forming strategic partnerships.
Improving customer experience and engagement was ranked the top priority by 63 per cent of the respondents. Other areas in which they could invest to address this need include digitalising onboarding, enhancing portfolio reporting across asset classes, improving service turnaround times and giving advisors more timely insights to support client conversations.
Recognising technology as a key to future competitiveness, another major talking point for these institutions is to speed up AI adoption, digital transformation and automation (46 per cent).
Fixed income
A third of the respondents said they expect fixed income solutions to see the biggest growth in demand among clients, reflecting a more defensive stance as clients seek to lock in yields ahead of anticipated interest-rate declines.
Other investments expected to see growth in demand are alternative investments (25 per cent) and exchange-traded funds (23 per cent) which offer portfolio diversification and resilience; these can provide exposure to gold, including gold ETFs, derivatives, and mutual funds.
Geopolitical tension was the main factor weighing down sentiment, with 44 per cent of respondents citing it as the biggest macroeconomic risk for 2026, outweighing concerns about slowing global growth (19 per cent).
“FIMs today know and understand the immense challenge that they face on two fronts – helping clients shift their portfolios amid the geopolitical environment and fast-changing investment environment due to technology innovations and also demographics; as well as the necessity to build scale and diversification in their businesses," Lim Leong Guan (pictured below), global head of financial intermediaries, family office and wealth advisory, Bank of Singapore, said. "It is heartening to see that they are taking concrete steps to meet those challenges.”
(This news service interviewed Bank of Singapore in April last year about its work with intermediaries, for example independent wealth managers, or external asset managers (EAMs)).
Lim Leong Guan