"You see that clients are not necessarily disengaging from the market, they are still engaged but they are not adding to it, so more or less on the sidelines as to waiting for things to clear up, whether there is going to be a direction that we can follow," he said.

He also said the world's largest wealth manager would roll out a new digital product called Circle One in Singapore on Tuesday and could take it to other markets should it go well.

(Reporting by Michael Shields, editing by Silke Koltrowitz)