Goldman Sachs’ private bank is reportedly expanding its lending to wealthy individuals with new loan products and credit offerings, amid commentary on how the Wall Street giant is said to be boosting its wealth management.

Goldman Sachs’ private bank is expanding its lending to
wealthy individuals with new loan products and credit offerings, the Financial Times reports, amid further
media commentary on how the Wall Street giant is said to be boosting wealth
management.

Goldman’s commercial bank unit, which contains the in-house
“private bank”, holds $13.8 billion of loans, including home mortgages, made to
companies and individual customers. New mortgage specialists hired by the
private bank will be expected to value “subscription capital call loans”, which
will allow investors to borrow money from Goldman to help fund private equity
investments. Goldman says they could reach annual volumes of up to $750
million, the FT said.

The firm declined to comment on the matter when contacted by WealthBriefing. 

“Standby letters of credit”, a relatively new offering from
Goldman’s private bank, are expected to reach yearly sales of $100 million to
$150 million, the publication said, arguing that the two products could boost
the private bank’s lending by almost $1 billion and reinforce Goldman’s relations
with wealthy customers.

This is not the first time that media have reported on
Goldman Sachs’ expansion of wealth management activity in recent months. WealthBriefing has understood that the
changes do not represent a major change in the US firm’s business model, however. In
the past, Goldman Sachs has generally been reticent about the details of its wealth management
activities or goals when approached by this publication.

Goldman Sachs’ business has had to adapt since it acquired a
commercial bank licence in the depths of the credit crisis, a move that enabled
the firm to obtain emergency lending from the Federal Reserve.

The FT said the growing private bank would give Goldman Sachs
wider access to deposits – a more stable type of funding than the wholesale
financing that typically backs investment banks’ operations – and a new source
of steadier revenues.

The “private wealth business is a good business for us. We
have a bank, we are a bank, a bank holding company with a bank, we’re raising
deposits, and we’ll use some of those deposits for private individual loans,
some of it for corporate loans”, David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial
officer, was quoted as saying in a July conference call.