Best private bank: Banco BPI
Banco BPI enhanced the breadth, sophistication and consistency of its private banking offering in Portugal over the review period, combining strong financial performance with operational and service upgrades that reshaped its client experience.
From mid‑2024 to mid‑2025, the bank expanded its assets under management to $11.8 billion, supported by $485 million in net new money, reflecting growing client confidence following improvements in advisory efficiency, investment execution and service delivery. At the same time, BPI’s cost-to-income ratio fell to 31%, allowing the bank to channel more resources into client-facing infrastructure and frontline advisory support.
A central development during the year was the full rollout of the bank’s redesigned digital environment. BPI expanded digital usage and upgraded adviser tooling, including Salesforce CRM and a redesigned investment proposal workflow supporting multi‑account proposals and significant time savings. As a result, client meetings were reoriented towards in-depth portfolio discussions and broader financial planning.
The restructuring of internal coverage also contributed to more even service delivery. By adjusting workloads and formalising a more balanced allocation of clients across advisers, BPI ensured a more uniform cadence of service, enabling portfolio reviews, risk updates and investment discussions to occur with greater responsiveness and depth of engagement.
Progress in alternative investments added to this shift. BPI overcame previous operational limitations by upgrading systems to distinguish committed capital from deployed capital, giving clients domestic private equity options designed for full deployment while offering remuneration on uninvested cash. Investment solutions such as BPI Switch (a unit-linked wrapper with tailored asset allocation), as well as increased involvement in private assets and structured products, contributed to its outstanding results. The very strong client uptake across the board signals a widening appetite for non‑traditional allocations within Portuguese private banking.
Beyond investments, BPI also strengthened long‑term client relationships through the launch of an exclusive mentoring programme for next‑generation family members. The initiative brought together senior leadership from private banking, asset management and the board to provide education on wealth management, independent advisory and financial markets.
Best international private bank: Bankinter
Bankinter stood out in Portugal’s private banking market during the review period by delivering sustained growth, advancing its advisory structure and making notable improvements to its operational efficiency.
By June 2025, the bank’s assets under management had increased 11% year-on-year, supported by a 10% expansion in the client base. Much of this progress stemmed from stronger engagement with advisory-led, off-balance-sheet solutions, which rose 11% and represented 70% of total private banking assets. These structures reduced balance-sheet exposure while deepening long-term, fee-based client relationships. Revenues grew 12%, reflecting rising adoption of discretionary mandates, broader use of investment funds and stronger demand for financial insurance products.
The service model for high-net-worth clients also evolved. In this group, assets under management increased 17.7%, and revenues rose 41.2%, supported by a twin-advisor framework in which private bankers work alongside investment advisors who provide technical oversight, improve portfolio discipline and support more sophisticated investment decisions.
Bankinter continued to advance its next-generation agenda over the review period. Integrating heirs as related clients, expanding remote onboarding and embedding ESG preferences into suitability processes helped align the advisory model with shifting demographics and regulatory demands.
Technology enhancements further improved execution quality and reduced administrative workload. Developments such as multi-order investment processing, automation of core know-your-customer procedures and growing uptake of digital signatures enabled bankers to prioritise strategic client engagement, supported by Bankinter’s efficient operating model.
Best pure play/boutique private bank: Banco Carregosa
Banco Carregosa delivered focused growth and deeper client engagement in Portugal’s private banking market during the review period.
Assets under supervision rose by approximately 52% over the review period – a shift that reflected sustained net new money from high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.
The bank strengthened its advisory architecture, combining cross-asset research with bespoke portfolio construction. This enabled clients with more complex requirements to access diversified strategies across private equity, venture capital and real estate vehicles, leading clients to allocate a larger proportion of their wealth to the bank, supported by broader, longer-term mandates.
Digital enhancements played a central role. AI-generated referral channels broadened lead acquisition and improved conversion, while behavioural analytics and upgraded reporting equipped relationship managers with clearer, data-driven insights.
Improvements to the GoBulling investment platform – including multi-device portfolio monitoring and embedded financial literacy tools – increased client engagement and supported timely reallocation decisions. These changes reinforced the bank’s high-touch model by enabling more responsive, evidence-based conversations with clients.
Banco Carregosa also advanced its product set. The migration of discretionary strategies into a unit-linked structure offered a more tax-efficient solution for domestic clients and simplified year-end reporting, helping to increase uptake among sophisticated investors seeking streamlined multi-asset exposure.
ESG integration continued to mature, with sustainability preferences incorporated directly into suitability assessments and a broadened range of solutions aligned with Articles 8 and 9. This ensured portfolios met stated client objectives while maintaining disciplined risk oversight – an important differentiator in Portugal’s private banking landscape.
Best for HNW: Banco BPI
An expansion of advisory capacity, digital tools and access to alternatives helped to elevate Banco BPI’s offering for Portugal’s high-net-worth (HNW) clients between during the review period.
HNW client assets rose to $5.413 billion in the first half of 2025, supported by $485 million in net new money. In addition, BPI consolidated its independent advisory service for clients with more than €2 million ($2.32 million), narrowing each adviser’s relationships book. This created the time required for more detailed conversations on portfolios, succession and tax structures – areas that increasingly require personalised attention.
Investment approvals, transfers and regulatory updates moved onto the app or website, reducing administrative steps and allowing in-person meetings to focus on structured, agenda-driven discussions. Relationship managers reported a marked improvement in client interaction as a result. Salesforce strengthened the management of client data and improved follow-up processes, supporting greater consistency in HNW coverage.
Access to private markets was widened by upgrading core systems to handle capital-call funds. Combined with a strengthened partnership with Altamar, this made commitments operationally viable for HNW portfolios. A private equity class linked to a Portugal special situations fund launched at the end of 2024 found strong client uptake, pointing to rising domestic interest in alternatives.
On the product front, the tax-efficient BPI Switch unit-linked structure gained traction as clients sought thematic repositioning options without fiscal impact on gains. The Switch product suite now includes the new BPI Switch Trends, an autonomous fund providing access to investments in specific themes or trends within global equities.
The number of relationship managers increased to 72, supported by extensive legal, tax and succession training, enhancing advisory capability for increasingly complex HNW needs. Exclusive talks spanning market outlooks, fiscal policy and sustainability brought together hundreds of HNW guests, alongside dedicated sports, art and lifestyle events across the country, including the Expresso BPI Golf Cup and Lisbon by Design.
Best for succession planning: Banco BPI
A strengthened advisory model and better-supported frontline teams enabled Banco BPI to respond to Portugal’s growing need for tax-efficient, multigenerational planning over the review period.
From mid-2024, the bank placed particular emphasis on improving the skills of its frontline teams in areas central to intergenerational planning. A bespoke 30-hour programme, delivered in partnership with EY, equipped advisers with up-to-date knowledge of inheritance taxation and the mechanics of relevant investment vehicles. This ensured that initial client conversations were informed by a clearer understanding of the implications of asset transfer decisions.
BPI also broadened the structural options available to families. Its unit-linked framework allows clients to tailor inheritance arrangements more precisely, with beneficiary flexibility and efficient tax treatment.
Products in the unit-linked BPI Switch suite offer personalisation options particularly valuable for families preparing portfolios for handover, allowing thematic repositioning without triggering immediate tax charges on gains. The latest addition to the bank’s offering is BPI Switch Trends, an autonomous fund providing access to specific themes or trends within global equities.
Forward-looking engagement with future inheritors formed another strand of the bank’s approach. Mentoring initiatives offered through BPI’s wealth division aim to familiarise younger family members with financial decision-making well before the point of inheritance. The bank has also rolled out dedicated youth accounts, part of the new BPI AGE-branded offering, for younger family members within the private banking universe. This early exposure reduced the risk of disruption when wealth eventually transfers, strengthening long-term client relationships.
Best for alternative investments: Bankinter
Bankinter strengthened its position in Portugal by widening private banking access to alternative assets that are not commonly available in the local market, broadening the range of high-quality investment opportunities offered to clients.
During the review period, the bank expanded its suite of alternative investment options, adding new funds in agriculture, technology and income-producing real estate. These additions helped diversify client portfolios beyond Portugal’s established focus on real estate, opening exposure to themes such as datacentre infrastructure and export-driven agricultural production. The platform’s structure – in which Bankinter co-invests in every product, retains veto rights and stays invested until the fund closes – added a governance discipline more often associated with institutional mandates.
Client demand was consistently high between July 2024 and June 2025. Some placements, including the Oriente real estate project, took just hours to complete, reflecting strong momentum behind Bankinter’s deal flow and the conviction clients place in the opportunities presented. Existing alternative investment clients continued to reinvest, with several holding extensive multi-fund portfolios.
Access was managed carefully, with minimum tickets of about €200,000 and automated concentration controls protecting portfolio suitability and ensuring alternatives remained targeted at clients of the scale needed to bear illiquidity and long investment horizons. This systematic risk control was particularly impactful in Portugal’s documentation-heavy regulatory environment, supporting private bankers by reducing administrative friction.
Best for digital solutions: Bankinter
Bankinter stood at the forefront of digital excellence in Portugal’s private banking industry, delivering an ecosystem that elevates advisory quality and client empowerment.
At the core of this leadership is its proprietary investment platform (IP), a fully integrated advisory engine that consolidates profiling, ESG alignment, execution, documentation and monitoring into a single compliant, data‑driven workflow.
Over the review period, Bankinter executed a series of high‑impact technological upgrades. The multi‑order proposal capability upgraded investment operations by unifying multiple subscriptions and redemptions into a single digitally authorised order. This automatically orchestrates liquidity, reconciliation and real‑time execution feedback – already covering 80% of the product universe.
Simultaneously, the digitalised know-your-customer and enhanced-due-diligence ecosystem eliminated paper-based friction, introducing automated completeness checks, client-banker alerting, and fully dematerialised due diligence flows.
Newly introduced advanced Power BI digital‑signature analytics now monitor adoption trends and process efficiency in real time, while the near‑complete rollout of digital signing has driven digital authorisation rates to well above two-thirds.
Finally, through its AI‑powered Dahlia platform and evolving ESG integration tools, Bankinter continued to embed regulatory sophistication and portfolio intelligence directly into the client journey.
These initiatives together demonstrated Bankinter’s ability to deliver Portugal’s most advanced private banking digital experience over the review period.
Best for digital assets: Bison Bank
Bison Bank leads Portugal’s evolving digital‑asset landscape, delivering a review period trajectory that reflects both strong strategy and operational excellence. As the first licensed and regulated digital asset service provider authorised by Banco de Portugal, Bison has established a market‑defining benchmark for institutional‑grade custody, execution and multi‑provider liquidity access.
Digital assets have become an increasingly material contributor to Bison’s financial performance, with revenues expected to exceed 50% year-on-year growth in the segment, supported by persistent client demand, cost management and strong commercial momentum.
The bank’s digital‑asset entity, Bison Digital Assets (BDA), has further demonstrated robust growth across clients, assets under management and trading volumes, underpinned by multi‑layer banking‑grade security and a resilient liquidity architecture.
Technological innovation was Bison Bank’s competitive differentiation over the review period. The rollout of a fully digital onboarding journey expanded international reach, while enhancements across cybersecurity, identity verification and automated operational controls ensured frictionless and compliant client experiences aligned with global best practice standards.
Finally, the forthcoming MiCA‑aligned integration of BDA directly into the bank further positions Bison as a strategically unified, efficiency‑driven institution ready to shape the next phase of Portugal’s digital‑asset economy.
