Société Générale and Société Générale Private Banking have maintained and strengthened their brand based in Monaco for over 100 years. In the job for just over a year, Alexandre Rousseau, the Chief Executive of Société Générale Private Banking Monaco, takes stock.
Société Générale Private Banking is firmly established in Monaco. What is your development plan for the future?
Société Générale’s strength lies in its diversity: it is both a private bank, a commercial bank and a retail bank. Strengthening the synergy between these areas generates development. We also work closely with the Southeast regional directorate of Société Générale in France: their private bank can make use of the expertise in Monaco e.g. for yacht, plane and luxury home financing. The teams are in favour of this synergy, the key objective being customer satisfaction and developing our relationships. In addition, our private bank has a ‘multi-booking center’ approach, in contact with our Swiss and Luxembourg based entities. We need to be able to manage our customers’ assets in these three countries. It is an international approach to expertise, which starts from customer needs in order to satisfy customers optimally. The Société Générale network is more powerful than our sole location.
How do you strengthen your customer portfolio?
The ‘sourcing’ of new customers in Monaco essentially consists of our introducing agents, recommendations from existing private clients and synergies between the bank’s different departments. The private bank benefits from the commercial bank’s clientele, and vice versa. Our bankers are specialised by customer type according to their language and geographical area. We also have a specific desk dedicated to external managers and family offices, with an information system reserved for them.
Overall, our customers value this full range of expertise and services: specialised credit and asset management under the same brand. This is the strength of the Société Générale group in Monaco.
Which investment products interest customers the most at present?
Today, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), Private Equity, and Liquid Real Estate.
We are highly committed to SRI, and at Société Générale Private Banking Monaco we are able to present to our customers a complete range of discretionary asset management solutions which incorporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria. These solutions can build in customised criteria to address highly specific customer priorities, such as selecting issuers in line with their carbon footprint or excluding specific controversial companies.
We also offer a range of structured products* with SRI or positive impact underlying assets (such as school or hospital financing).
And finally, structured products* with a charitable component, which we hope to promote this year. We have already done this in the past to benefit AMADE, and are now renewing our supportive pledge in favour of the Monegasque Red Cross.
The banking industry is changing, how do you view the future?
One strength lies in the digitalisation of customer relations. In wealth management, robots are already selecting the asset allocations for certain types of customer. We are awaiting the digitalisation legislation expected to be passed in Monaco in June, on electronic signatures - which we are ready for - among other things. Société Générale Private Banking has also launched Synoé, a digital solution providing customer-specific advice, executable via a click in a dedicated website area. The advice is automatically generated and transmitted via artificial intelligence and natural language, allowing private banking experts’ market comments to be coupled with each customer’s allocations and investment objectives. Towards the end of the year, we are also going to test a new remote banking system for private banking customers.
Moreover, internally in Monaco we were the first to test teleworking, which now applies to 65 out of 250 people. They perform support activities, without transactions or direct relationships with customers. Productivity is excellent and this system also helps reduce our carbon footprint. We intend to promote it in the coming years.
Digitalisation and artificial intelligence are strategic vision tools. This is fundamental in Monaco. The country has many advantages, including its surplus budget and the clear picture of its social policy, the policy of welcoming residents and its modernisation. This is highly positive.
*We remind you that structured products have a risk of capital loss during their lifespan and on maturity. They are therefore aimed at customers with experience and knowledge of the markets and a compatible investor profile. Given these risks, they are offered to customers with the objective of diversifying their portfolio and they shall not constitute a majority proportion of it.
