Once a year, my firm conducts a ranking exercise on foreign asset managers' efforts to break into the vast, largely untapped Chinese market. This year, one lesson is clear: when it comes to China, asset managers should go big and go broad — or go home.

Z-Ben Advisors’ 2018 China Rankings, which scores fund managers on their current and future business strategy across the three main business lines that count in the Chinese market, found UBS taking pole position away from JPMorgan Asset Management. Schroders was also notable for climbing into third position, while HSBC slipped from third to seventh.