It may seem hard to believe amid stories of job cuts in the City and Wall Street, but as far as private banks are concerned, there is no flood of people looking to fill a few precious jobs. On the contrary, there is a still a shortage of talent.

At Credit Suisse’s private banking operation, filling the talent gap is a challenge it is confident of tackling, however. The Zurich-listed bank said it intends to recruit 60 MBA graduates in 2009, double the size of the global intake it recruits each year so far. The private banking arm of Credit Suisse intends to hire a total of 1,000 client managers globally by 2010.

"There are different schools of thought regarding the development of private bankers. As part of our overall approach, Credit Suisse is retraining professionals from equivalent sectors in the economy," Bjorn Blanchard, learning business partner at Credit Suisse, told WealthBriefing in a recent interview.

Credit Suisse is acting to deal with recruitment at a time when consultants such as PricewaterhouseCoopers have argued that lack of skilled personnel threatens to derail rapid growth in the industry.

In the past, the supposedly more glamorous – and typically better paid – world of investment banking drew in the lion’s share of graduates looking to make a career in finance. The traditionally more staid world of private banking often got overlooked as a career option.

Mr Blanchard and his colleagues at Credit Suisse say this is changing, however, in part a reflection of how wealth management has grown in step with the increase in the population of high net worth individuals around the world.

"We are starting to see a lot of interest from lateral hires and we will always look at those individuals because there is talent there,” said Stephanie Ashmore, vice president, strategic recruitment at Credit Suisse.

"Because there is that war for talent [in private banking], everybody is looking. Some private bankers like to demand a premium for their services while others are very selective on where they want to go,” Ms Ashmore told WealthBriefing.

Describing the competition for talent as a “war” is not just hyperbole. UBS, the Swiss wealth management giant, recently fought and won a bruising legal battle with UK wealth start-up Vestra over the latter’s ability to poach UBS’s clients and staff. Every day, the pages of WealthBriefing chronicle the constant ebb and flow of client managers and other staff from one wealth management house to another.

But poaching rivals’ clients will not be a workable strategy for all firms if demand for wealth management services is expanding across the board. A problem in hiring client advisors has been that getting the right “fit” of personal skills combined with sound grasp of complex financial issues is not easy. A financially savvy broker may be poor in explaining investments to a private client, while a relationship manager with good personal skills may lack the necessary knowledge about cutting-edge financial products.

To deal with this issue, Mr Blanchard said Credit Suisse ensures relationship managers have the required inter-personal skills to serve sophisticated clients. After which the bank provides more personalised training for each RM around any required aspects of wealth management, for example tactical or alternative investments.

The Credit Suisse Global MBA Programme starts with a five-week “boot camp” introductory course in Zurich followed by a seven-month training period in the employees’ localities around the world, finishing with accreditation by Credit Suisse. "Bankers are enormously appreciative of the fact that we are not sheep-dipping them through a standardised programme."

"There can be few careers that offer the opportunity to build successful, long-term business relationships with clients and provide so many intellectual challenges."

"I think there is an opportunity for the creation of a Masters of Finance [in wealth management] or something of that sort," Mr Blanchard said.

Despite the lack of MBA programmes in wealth management, a number of institutions, such as New York University, and Wharton, which is part of University of Pennsylvania, do run a variety of courses in the sector, however. In Singapore, a financial hub that has seen rapid growth in the wealth industry, the Zurich-based Swiss Banking School and the Singaporean government has launched the Wealth Management Institute.

As with other parts of the economy, the laws of supply and demand cannot be ignored. If demand for wealth management talent continues to grow, then the world’s business schools may eventually respond. Until they do, banks such as Credit Suisse are clearly determined they will not suffer from any talent gap.