World’s Best Private Banks 2026: North America

Thriving equity and capital markets, rising investor appetite for wealth planning, and intensifying competition in the industry defined a standout year for North America’s private banks, even amid persistent economic volatility.

Firms expanded their offerings, seeing the wealthy-professional and mass-affluent segments as key growth opportunities. They also broadened their range of services. Demand spiked for direct indexing, private credit, family-office solutions, and enhanced digital platforms.

The firm prides itself on its dedicated and tenured advisors, with an average tenure of 15 years. This experience, combined with a 25-to-1 client-to-adviser ratio, ensures continuity, a deep understanding of client needs, and bespoke solutions. 

One of Goldman Sachs’ strengths lies in its full-service, open-architecture alternatives platform, one of the world’s largest. This platform provides clients access to Goldman Sachs’ unique sourcing capabilities, offering both proprietary strategies and leveraging extensive relationships with external asset managers across public and private markets.

Through disciplined execution and bespoke market positioning across various ESG-related assets, Goldman Sachs has been redefining sustainable wealth management in North America. 

With its already leading suite of sustainable investment options, the giant has been growing in the space organically and inorganically. 

As a result, client adoption of ESG principles continues to deepen. Forty-four percent of Goldman’s 500 largest private wealth clients globally invested in sustainable mandates. A substantial share of those clients are based in North America.

Internally, the company has already delivered 80% of its hefty sustainable finance goal ($750 billion by 2030). It continues to support the growing demand for sustainable solutions across financing, investing, and client advisory work.

In North America, this translated into notable private market activity through the Horizon Environment & Climate Solutions I Fund and the Imprint Nature-Based Opportunities Fund. Both funds account for over $900 million in invested cost.

Citi Private Bank’s dedicated focus on AI, data analytics, and personalized digital engagement as a core part of its performance-driven UHNW-focused strategy continues to pay off big time in 2025.

This year, the firm debuted what it calls “Advisor Insights—Ideas to Engage,” an AI-powered dashboard that crafts individualized messages based on market developments, portfolio activity, and client preferences, significantly reducing response times and deepening advisor-client interaction.

This adds to Citi’s already best-in-class suite of digital offerings. It includes Global Investment Lab, which provides quantitative portfolio analysis and institutional-grade modeling for sophisticated clients. 

In parallel, the Chief Investment Office (CIO) delivers real-time insights through digital channels, including the weekly CIO Strategy Bulletin and ongoing asset-class publications for clients and advisors.

Its Citi Latitude Knowledge Hub continues to serve as a digital learning ecosystem. It features financial literacy modules, sustainability content, and expert-led “Impact Sessions” with thought leaders.

Facing intensifying competition from national players and an increasingly demanding client base, much of the regional private banking market turned to strategic mergers and acquisitions in 2025 to strengthen asset bases, expand geographic reach, and enhance service capabilities. The shift was supported by a more accommodating regulatory environment under the Trump administration.

Among the year’s major market moves, Columbia Banking System announced a $2.04 billion acquisition of Pacific Premier Bancorp in April, followed by PNC Financial Services’ proposed $4.1 billion purchase of FirstBank Holding in September, and Fifth Third Bancorp’s $10.9 billion all-stock acquisition of Comerica Inc. in October.

At the same time, regional firms doubled down on organic growth through digital transformation—investing heavily in data infrastructure, automation, and artificial intelligence to deliver more seamless, insight-driven client experiences while improving operational efficiency. Bolstered by scale and modernization, regional private banks evolved their traditional relationship-driven model without losing the local expertise and trust that remain central to their appeal.

After more than 160 years of serving generations of families and business owners across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, Fifth Third Bank’s success continues to rest on its ability to blend local insight with scale and innovation.

By further integrating private banking, wealth planning, trust and estate services, insurance, and investment management into a seamless client experience, as part of its flagship “One Bank” strategy, the bank continued to double down on its focus on the regions’ high- and ultra-high-net-worth growing clientele. 

Recently, the bank launched two key initiatives to keep building in that direction. A new cloud-based investment platform that now provides real-time portfolio data and integrated planning tools, improving efficiency and responsiveness, and the Family Wealth experience, which offers ultra-high-net-worth families coordinated guidance in investment, tax, and estate planning to support long-term, multigenerational strategies.

As a result of this holistic effort, the bank reported $520 million in revenue and $306 million in fee income in 2024, while assets under management grew to $42.9 billion, up a massive 17% year over year.

America’s oldest private bank, BNY Wealth, continues to prove it is also one of the most innovative, setting the trend for holistic multigenerational wealth management in the country’s most prosperous region.

In 2025, the bank expanded its proprietary end-to-end wealth platform with several new developments. Among these are Wove Trading, an institutional fixed-income engine designed for optimized portfolio construction and liquidity. The bank also expanded its flagship Wove Portfolios tool, which enables fully integrated, unified managed accounts with sleeve-level data across workflows for several client tiers. 

Internally, advisors benefited from developments in BNY Investments’ ResearchFlex and PortfolioFlex offerings, delivering institutional-quality manager research and customizable, tax-aware model portfolios at scale. 

Further enhancing their efficiency is BNY Advisor Growth Network, which connects advisors with experts and peers, delivering practical research and practice‑management insights at scale. 

Thanks to its superior execution, BNY reported $2.1 trillion in assets under management by mid-2025, a 3% year-over-year increase.

Supported by expanding regional teams and strong client acquisition in key markets such as Miami, Atlanta, and Palm Beach, Northern Trust’s strategy to deepen its presence across the US Southeast has been paying off big time. 

In one of the fastest-growing regions for the ultra-high-net-worth tier, the bank has found a perfect match for its award-winning suite of offerings, including its flagship Goals Driven Wealth Management, which has been adopted by over 25,000 clients and represents more than $87 billion in AUM. This singular approach helps wealthy families and entrepreneurs align investment and estate planning strategies to long-term goals amid shifting market and tax environments.

Reinforced by the “Plan and Prepare for All Outcomes” initiative, this personalized approach has driven a sharp increase in regional engagement and new mandates from ultra-high-net-worth families and business owners. 

As a result of its best-in-class execution, the bank’s wealth management division reported $492.6 billion of AUM as of September 2025, largely driven by a thriving, fast-growing Southeast operation. This is roughly 9.3% year-over-year growth for the division compared to September 2024.

Focusing on a client-centered approach that combines local market expertise with the resources of one of the nation’s largest financial institutions, PNC Private continued to broaden its historical leadership in the Southwest region, amassing $131 billion in AUM as of mid-2025—a 7% year-over-year increase, with roughly half from ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Against the backdrop of increasing competition from the nation’s large banks, PNC remained laser-focused on its flagship “national reach, local delivery” model, operating through teams of relationship strategists, wealth planners, investment advisors, and fiduciary specialists. 

PNC’s award-winning Hawthorn division, which serves ultra-high-net-worth clients, continued to strengthen with several key hires that further bolstered the bank’s top-tier family office management and ultra-high-net-worth advisory services.

As a result, PNC Private achieved its highest-ever client satisfaction scores in 2025, with an eight-point rise in its Net Promoter Score—driven by clients noting more proactive engagement from advisors.

Wells Fargo’s focus is on the fast-growing affluent and high‑net‑worth client segments. 

Central to this approach is its independent adviser platform, FiNet, which grew to over 1,650 advisers in 2025. Alongside traditional branch and wirehouse offerings, FiNet provides clients with a robust independent-adviser network, helping bridge key gaps in today’s rapidly evolving market.

The bank has also continued to upgrade its digital and operational infrastructure, making account processes smoother, enhancing advisory tools, and integrating AI-driven analytics to support smarter portfolio management and planning. Combined with expanded lending, fiduciary, and philanthropic services, these improvements have strengthened client engagement and fueled asset growth.

As a result of best-in-class wealth management execution, Wells Fargo’s Wealth & Investment Management segment reported $2.4 trillion in client assets by Q3 2025, an 8% increase year over year.