“I still have no idea whom or what this thing is supposed to be for. At $3,500, it’s not a device for the masses, or even the mass affluent. It’s a big, honking statement piece — a status symbol for your face.”

Citi's China wealth management operations, part of the retail banking business it has planned to exit since 2021, mainly serves mass affluent clients in the world's second-largest economy.

"JPM views FRC as more complementary to its mass affluent approach than its ultra high net worth offering," Jason Goldberg, Brian Morton and Matthew Kesselhaut analysts at Barclays said in a note adding that they expect FRC to be additive to JPM's consumer and community banking business.

Kelleher touched on the scrapped $1.4 billion deal to buy Wealthfront, an automated wealth provider with a U.S. focus that would have enabled the Swiss bank to expand in the mass affluent wealth category.

Chinese banks dominate the distribution of proprietary and third-party wealth products in the country where there is growing demand from high-networth individuals and the mass affluent.