The gap is real, and it’s bigger than most bankers assume

Research from Avaloq, covering more than 3,000 wealth managers and investors across 15 markets including Singapore, found that 93% of Singapore investors who hold crypto are trading it on external exchanges instead of through their bank or wealth manager. The same research found that 35% of Singapore investors switched their investment strategy in the past year, with 44% choosing to invest more capital and 38% adopting a more aggressive approach.

That’s a striking number for an industry built on relationship trust. It means a meaningful slice of the digital asset conversation is happening entirely outside the advisory relationship — clients are making allocation decisions, taking on custody risk, and building positions without ever raising it with their RM.

The banks have caught up. Client behaviour hasn’t followed — yet

It’s not that Singapore banks are behind. DBS Private Bank, for instance, reported that high- and ultra-high-net-worth clients traded more than S$3.1 billion in cryptocurrencies and crypto-linked instruments through its DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx) in the first half of 2025 alone — trading volumes that grew eightfold from 2023. DBS has gone further than most, becoming the first bank in Singapore to integrate digital assets into trust and succession planning, with DBS Trustee now able to hold cryptocurrency as trust property.

The regulatory environment is also moving to support this. The Monetary Authority of Singapore issued a consultation paper in April 2026 proposing a more workable capital framework for banks holding cryptoassets on public blockchains — a shift from earlier, more restrictive Basel-aligned proposals that would have made it capital-prohibitive for banks to hold major stablecoins in any meaningful size.

In other words: the institutional infrastructure, regulatory clarity, and product shelf are largely in place. The gap is client habit and trust, not capability.

Why clients still go around their bank

A few forces seem to be driving this, based on industry commentary:

• Habit formed before the bank offered a solution. Many HNW investors opened exchange accounts years before their private bank had a regulated offering, and haven’t had a reason to move.
• Perceived product breadth. External exchanges are often seen as offering a wider range of tokens and faster access to new listings than a bank’s curated, compliance-reviewed shelf.
• The next generation is driving adoption. Industry analysis points to crypto-native heirs and younger UHNW investors as a key force pushing wealth managers to expand digital asset access — this generation doesn’t necessarily default to their family’s private bank for crypto exposure the way they might for other asset classes.
• Banks that are still hesitant to offer direct crypto services are increasingly turning to Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs) as a regulated, lower-friction way to give clients exposure without disrupting existing custodian relationships — a sign the industry itself recognises this as a bridge, not a finished solution.

What this means for private bankers and RMs

This isn’t really a technology problem to solve — it’s a conversation private bankers need to be equipped to have. A few practical implications:

1. Assume the client already has exposure. If a client hasn’t mentioned crypto, that doesn’t mean they don’t hold it — it likely means they haven’t seen a reason to bring it into the advisory conversation.
2. Custody and succession are underrated hooks. Clients who self-custody or hold assets on an exchange rarely have a real succession plan for those assets. This is a genuine, non-salesy way to open the conversation.
3. Know your bank’s actual capability before the client does. With banks moving quickly on tokenisation, custody, and crypto-linked structured products, RMs who can speak fluently about what’s now possible — beyond “we don’t really do that” — will hold the conversation instead of losing it to a private banker.
4. Regulatory literacy is now a client-facing skill. MAS’s evolving stance on digital asset capital treatment is exactly the kind of development sophisticated clients ask about directly.

The bottom line

Singapore’s private banks aren’t losing the digital asset conversation because of weak products — DBS’s own numbers show serious institutional momentum. They’re losing pieces of it because client behaviour formed before the bank had (or the RM knew) a credible answer. Closing that gap is a training and confidence issue as much as a product one.

momenta’s Evaluating Digital Assets: Bitcoin & Blockchain for Clients program is built for exactly this — helping private bankers and RMs hold credible, confident digital asset conversations with clients.