FNB Private’s award-winning succession planning sets the bar for generational wealth management

For many private banking clients, growing wealth isn’t the main challenge they face; it’s protecting it, navigating complex family structures and ensuring a smooth handover to the next generation.

Whether they are managing offshore assets, dealing with family dynamics or navigating evolving tax landscapes, high-net-worth clients require, and expect, more than generic estate planning advice - they want strategic guidance that reflects their full financial and personal reality.

Sizwe Nxedlana, FNB Private Segment CEO says, “we embraced this challenge by placing succession planning at the heart of our integrated, advice-led private banking model. Succession planning is not a value-add or specialist offering - it’s a core part of how we partner with clients to build, preserve and transfer wealth. It’s a bold approach that recently earned us the title of Africa’s Best Private Bank for Succession Planning at the 2025 Euromoney Global Private Banking Awards – an accolade that recognises not only the strength of the bank’s fiduciary capabilities, but also its commitment to making high-quality estate and legacy planning accessible to all its private banking clients.

Sizwe Nxedlana

“Succession planning is about more than just setting up a Will or a trust. It’s about creating clarity amid complexity, and helping families plan across borders, through generations and within a rapidly changing regulatory environment,” adds Nxedlana.

Unlike many traditional private banking models that take something of a silo approach to fiduciary advice, FNB has embedded succession planning into every client interaction. All our Private Advisors are trained to initiate and guide foundational estate planning conversations, backed by a national and global team of fiduciary specialists, estate administrators, offshore structuring experts and philanthropy advisers. Rather than referring clients to a niche succession adviser, the entire FNB Private frontline is equipped to identify the succession needs of clients and their families and deliver tailored, actionable advice.

One standout example of the effectiveness of this approach involved a family with a mix of local and offshore assets, including a business structure held in a close corporation. The client faced a significant estate liquidity gap. The typical solution to this challenge would be to default to life insurance to close the gap; but the FNB Private team chose rather to help the client restructure the business through a family trust, drastically reducing tax exposure and limiting costly insurance needs. Working with international attorneys, they also harmonised the family’s Wills across jurisdictions, ensuring that their wishes will be upheld globally.

“This level of integrated succession planning doesn’t happen in isolation. We are not just looking at the estate. We’re looking at business continuity, offshore compliance, philanthropy and family governance - and making sure the advice is seamless, not scattered,” says Aneesa Razack, CEO of FNB Fiduciary and FNB International.

Aneesa Razack

Razack points out that FNB Private’s award-winning succession model also reflects the real-world needs of today’s globally connected families. With offshore assets and family members often spread across jurisdictions, clients need support that includes international trusteeship, cross-border tax planning and structuring that takes double taxation agreements and forced heirship rules into account. Through FNB International Trustees in Guernsey, the FNB Private offers both the technical capability and the global reach to deliver fully compliant offshore solutions.

At the same time, the bank’s commitment to innovation means succession planning isn’t just for high income earners. In 2023, the bank launched a digital platform that allows clients to view their estate structures dynamically and draft their own Wills - tools that are today used by more than 11 000 clients. Private Advisors also have access to this platform, empowering them to deliver deeper fiduciary conversations with clients across the full wealth spectrum.

Razack says that this combination of digital capability, broad adviser enablement and deep fiduciary expertise is what distinguishes FNB Private. From drafting complex Wills to managing philanthropic vehicles and administering estates across multiple jurisdictions, every client touchpoint is supported by a comprehensive governance framework that ensures legal and regulatory integrity, while expert advisory forums thoroughly check local and offshore trust structures to minimise risk and maintain alignment with tax and compliance requirements.

“For FNB Private, succession planning is not just about transferring wealth,” says Razack, “it’s about preserving values, managing risk and ensuring that families are set up to thrive across generations.”

Through its integrated advice model, FNB Private is shifting the perception of private banking away from exclusivity towards long-term relevance. As part of this shift, succession planning is no longer an afterthought or an additional service; it’s a cornerstone of how the bank builds trust, delivers value and equips its clients to shape enduring legacies.