Subcontinent's wealth managers find themselves in buyer's market for talent. India-based wealth managers are bucking a trend of layoffs in the financial-service arena. Taking advantage of lowered compensation expectations, firms such as Bank Sarasin Alpen, EFG Private Bank, Birla Sunlife, Religare Macquarie, Credit Suisse and Barclays Wealth are beating the bushes for qualified private-client personnel.

"At an industry level, the cost of acquiring wealth management talent has come down by 25-30% compared to peak levels in 2007," Ankit Bansal, CEO of Mumbai-based Sapphire Human Solution s told the Gurgaon, India-based Economic Times this week.

Looking for guidance

Religare-Macquarie, a year-old joint venture between Sydney, Australia-based financial-service company Macquarie Group and Delhi, India-based securities brokerage Religare, plans to add 180 wealth managers across India in the near term. Birla Sunlife, a tie-in between Mumbai-based industrial giant Aditya Birla and Toronto-based insurer Sun Life, has already hired 50 sales people and plans to add 100 more. London-based Barclays Wealth is planning to bring in 100 new employees before the end of February 2009. Meanwhile Basel-based private bank Sarasin Alpen is gearing up to recruit India-based staff in aid of a home-based initiative to serve expatriate Indians.

If anything, the global-market downturn has prompted affluent Indians -- who might have been content to rely on "social and professional contacts" for advice on investing in less turbulent times -- to turn to "wealth managers, both to grow their investments and [to] protect their wealth," says Satyanarayan Bansal, head of Barclays' Indian private-client business.

Meanwhile, cut-backs in other areas of Indian financial service and the return of former expatriate wealth-managers who have been down-sized abroad has eased a shortage of talent and put hirers in the driver's seat for the first time in several years. -FWR

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