Zurich Bank Aims at Brazil, Florida to Expand in Americas

(Bloomberg) — EFG International AG, a private-banking boutique based in Zurich, is expanding its 300-person team serving clients from the Americas with an emphasis on Brazil and South Florida.

Wealth under management from the Americas increased faster than any of EFG’s other regions last year, bringing in $4 billion, according to Sanjin Mohorovic, chief executive officer of the firm’s EFG Capital brokerage in Miami and head of the company’s Americas operation.

Latin American clients are responsible for more than 12% of the $239 billion in assets the firm has under management globally, and Brazil is “the key market” in the region, representing about 20% of the $30 billion managed by EFG in the Americas, Mohorovic said in an interview.

“We have seen in the last years a flow of wealth going from the south to the north in the Americas, particularly to the United States,” he said, adding that there is “a lot of Latin American wealth in South Florida that we believe we can capture.”

EFG doesn’t offer local private banking or wealth-management services in Latin America, but has booking centers in cities including Miami, London, Zurich and Geneva that serve as hubs for the region’s rich individuals.

“US entrepreneurs are also diversifying outside the United States — investing in Asia, London, Europe — and we are also providing them the ability to do that,” he said. “They are buying houses in South France, the Swiss Alps, and we help them with mortgage loans to finance those acquisitions.”

With operations in more than 20 countries, EFG hired five people in the past 12 months for its two local offices in Brazil, one in Sao Paulo and one in Rio. Marcelo Cavalcanti, executive director responsible for EFG Bank in Brazil, leads those outposts.

Mohorovic said the plan is to keep hiring. This year, the lender also recruited a team in Miami and a banker in Switzerland that’s serving Brazil, Mohorovic said.

Unlike what’s typical for rich individuals elsewhere in Latin American, Brazilians have most of their wealth invested in local markets. That means there’s a much bigger opportunity to diversify their holdings, said Luis Ferreira, EFG’s chief investment officer in the Americas.

Total assets under management in Brazil’s local private-banking industry were 2.74 trillion reais in March, according to Anbima, the capital markets association. That was a 4% increase from December.

Pedro Carregosa, who oversaw Brazil for EFG in recent years, was promoted in March to become head of private banking for the Americas, based in Geneva, while Eduardo Cruz now leads growth in the Brazil business out of Miami.

In addition to Sao Paulo and Rio, EFG also has outposts in Lima, Bogota and Punta Del Este, Uruguay. It has an advisory office in Panama with more than 20 people, a bank in the Cayman Islands and another in the Bahamas. It has a broker-dealer and a registered investment advisory business in Miami.

“We are also expanding our presence within Panama, which is becoming a hub, and South Florida,” Mohorovic said.

EFG provides investment advisory services, credit and mortgages, wealth planning, asset protection and trading for sophisticated individuals and family offices.

The group has a target of hiring 50 to 70 client relationship managers every year, and the Americas region would be responsible for as much as 15% of those additions, according to Mohorovic. The annual growth goal target in terms of net new assets is between 4% and 6% of the assets under management for EFG as a whole, while it aims to grow faster than the market in each of the regions in which it operates, he said.

“What we see in Latin America and of course in Brazil is a place where there is no war, there are many natural resources, it’s quite sophisticated in terms of the banking and financial system,” Mohorovic said. “And it’s growing a lot in terms of entrepreneurs and families, and they are becoming international investors.”

(Adds growth target in 15th paragraph. In a previous version of this story the company corrected the number of countries where EFG has a presence in seventh paragraph.)

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