SG Morning Highlights | Bank of Singapore Trust Business Sees Significant Post-COVID Lift

Advancers / Decliners is 72 to 53, with 142.72 million securities worth S$71.62 million changing hands.

The Covid-19 health crisis is mostly in the rear-view mirror, but the Bank of Singapore’s (BOS) wealth and trust planning business continues to reap a silver lining. Wealth planning and structuring activity have intensified among BOS' ultra-high net worth (UHNW) clients, causing a significant uptick in the establishment of trusts. BOS expects the number of UHNW clients who set up trust structures in Singapore to more than double this year. In the first six months alone, the number of trusts, established through its subsidiary BOS Trustee, has exceeded the whole of 2022.

Singapore's Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) ended August with -2.5% in total returns. The total returns for August translate to a drop from July when the iEdge S-REIT Index returned 1.8%. The August returns bring the year-to-date total returns of S-REITS to 1.3%. SGX also reported that retail investors net bought $187.7m of S-REITs, whilst institutional investors net sold $94.3m in August.

Singapore dollar-denominated bank bonds continue to be one of the most popular corporate bonds in 2023, despite also being the most controversial at the beginning of the year. Year to date, bonds issued by the financial sector represent the majority of the Singapore dollar (SGD) issuances at close to 74.4 per cent, according to Bloomberg. This figure is the highest we have seen in recent years, greatly exceeding the 55.5 per cent in 2020, 53 per cent in 2021 and 45.9 per cent in 2022. Likewise, the volume of issuances by the financial sector has been the highest in recent years.