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outheast Asia'€™s largest bank, DBS Group Holdings, has entered the private sector banking segment in a big way, increasing its income from wealth management services to almost S$360 million (US$265 million) in the first quarter from a quarterly average of S$275 million in 2014 and S$231 million in 2013.

DBS managing director and group head of consumer banking and wealth management Tan Su Shan told financial editors from Asia here last week that DBS had set an ambitious target of S$120 billion in assets under management within the next three years, fueled by a steadily increasing number of billionaires and multi-millionaires in Singapore, China and Indonesia.

DBS, with almost S$400 billion in assets and S$52 billion in market capitalization as of March, also looks to tie up more Indonesian billionaires into its private banking unit to upgrade the city-state as the Switzerland of Asia.

'€œHowever, potential clients are always subject to tight screening, multi-layer review before being admitted into the DBS private banking service,'€ noted Tan at the regional news conference, held on the sidelines of the 2015 DBS Insights Conference, which ended in Singapore on Friday.

 Certainly, she added, customers for the DBS private banking service should be high net worth individuals with a minimum of S$350,000 in investible financial assets.

But also a most important component of the screening process was related to the comprehensive assessment of the risk and earnings profile of the potential clients to prevent money laundering, added Tan.

'€œThe first screening process is made by the local office of DBS, like DBS Indonesia, in case of clients from Indonesia, followed by another vigorous review process in the DBS headquarters in Singapore,'€ she said.

The DBS first quarterly report of the year showed that the bank had 250 branches in 17 Asian countries, including 34 in a dozen cities in Indonesia.

She added that data mining into potential clients was also key to getting better insight into what customers from different countries wanted.

Tan apparently made the clarifications to quell rumors and allegations often made by politicians in Indonesia that Singapore had become a safe haven for ill-gotten financial gains from Indonesian businessmen and corruptors.

DBS acquired Societe Generale'€™s Asian private bank last year, thereby boosting its ranking up to Asia'€™s seventh-biggest private bank with a S$96 billion worth of assets under management.

Tan said being based and the oldest bank in Singapore, DBS had a solid foundation to build on with an extensive network to give it a footprint in the affluent market.

Another DBS advantage, compared to other global private banking units, was that DBS bankers had known many of their customers a long time and had served them as they had reaped more of Asia'€™s fast-rising prosperity, she said.

Earlier at the press conference, DBS CEO Piyush Gupta said DBS had posted a 3 percent rise in its net income to a record S$1.27 billion in the first quarter from S$1.23 billion a year earlier.

DBS'€™ first quarterly report also showed that revenue from DBS'€™s bancassurance business was projected to rise to about S$500 million in the next couple of years from an expected S$250 million this year.

The lender has a 15-year accord to sell insurance products for Manulife Financial Corp., Canada'€™s largest life insurer, starting early this year. (vin)