Nicholas Tan is to step down from his position as head of global wealth management at OCBC around the middle of this month, WealthBriefingAsia can exclusively reveal.

Tan is understood to be planning to increase his involvement with Singapore Management University, having been teaching there for the past two years as an adjunct staff member.

Tan has been with OCBC for six years, having previously been head of treasury product sales support and head of balance sheet management at the bank. Before this he was treasurer of the Singapore branch of the Austrian private bank Raiffeisen.

Succeeding Tan as global head of wealth management from the middle of this month will be Wyson Lim. Lim has been running the bank's Singapore business for the past two years, and also headed the Malaysian wealth management for several years. He first joined OCBC in 2000, having previously spent two years at Standard Chartered as product manager, investment services.

In other recent developments at the bank, last month OCBC was hailed as the world’s financially strongest bank, topping the Bloomberg Markets inaugural rankings. In assessing 70 major banks for the study, the news service looked at metrics including their Tier 1 capital ratios, ratio of non-performing assets to total assets and loan loss ratios, among others.