Krutham survey reveals SA's top private banks and wealth managers

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This comprehensive survey of 170 firms and their clients sets the benchmark for top performers in South Africa.

The survey’s comprehensive client questionnaire, which accounts for 60% of the rating, and resulting feedback places emphasis on client rankings of firms across an extensive list of categories and services in various investor categories.

In addition to the Top Wealth Manager for large institutions and boutiques and the Top Private Bank, there are several wealth-management archetypes, including lump-sum investor, young professional, entrepreneur, executive, retiree and wealthy family.

The annual survey is designed as a guide for potential clients to establish which institution will serve their individual needs the best while also generating substantial statistical analysis of options available in the wealth-management and banking space – a useful benchmark for firms competing in the financial sector.

In 2024, 12,317 clients of the wealth managers and private banks completed the survey, with this high number of respondents significantly enhancing the credibility of this year’s findings.

Client-centered excellence

Private Client Holdings (PCH), a Cape Town-based company that offers a family-office approach to wealth management, was awarded Top Wealth Manager: Boutiques for 2024.

“We are humbled to have been recognised, especially by our clients who we are committed to serving. At Private Client Holdings, we focus on nurturing the wealth of our clients and take pride in working with multiple generations of families, so this award is especially meaningful,” says Andrew Ratcliffe, director at PCH.

Having won Top Boutique Wealth Management firm in SA in 2021, the company consciously stepped back from entering the survey in 2022/23 and elected to focus on better understanding its own client experience and journey across all its Family Office service pillars (asset, cash & wealth management, fiduciary, financial & risk services) to identify pain points and then challenged its teams to resolve them.

“Over the last 18 months, we have invested considerable time and effort to review both our client- and more recently, our colleague experience at PCH. Our mission statement of nurturing wealth for our private clients and their families is fundamental to our relationship with all our stakeholders, and the work that our team has done in the client experience space makes this year’s results even more rewarding,” said Ratcliffe.

The company offers a forward-thinking service, which is made up of six specialist pillars - wealth management, asset management, financial services, fiduciary services, cash management and risk management.

While each unit concentrates on its specialised aspect of wealth management, all pillars collaborate to deliver a cohesive and in-depth family-office approach to wealth-management solutions. This successful working philosophy is underpinned by their core values of trust, professionalism and commitment to their clients’ financial wellbeing at all times.

Private Client Holdings has a 34-year track record of strong and steady performance, which has clearly inspired confidence among its investors, resulting in not only its year-on-year growth, but also these latest accolades.