Reviewing news headlines and conversations with industry figures, it is hard to avoid noticing how major banks in Asia are talking a lot about hiring for client-facing and other roles. With cost pressures ever present, it also explains why firms want AI to boost productivity and achieve scalability.

Whatever the flows of wealth from one centre to another might mean, the net effect appears unmistakable: banks in Asia-Pacific are hiring to keep on top of it all. 

This year, a raft of international and domestic Asian banks have said they are on a hiring drive. Banks in this bracket include HSBC, DBS, OCBC, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Julius Baer and Standard Chartered. 

UBS was the latest name to pop up in a report. Having said in early February that it intends to add about 50 bankers in Hong Kong for its wealth business, UBS confirmed to WealthBriefing a media report that it wants to bring in an approximate total of 100 bankers for APAC this year. UBS’s APAC business attracted $9.2 billion in net new assets in the quarter. The bank reported its second-quarter financial figures here.

Forces are pulling wealth in different directions in Asia. Perhaps to the detriment of some centres, there is Bejing’s crackdown on the use of offshore accounts. On the upside, there is Hong Kong’s new tax regime which is designed to encourage private equity funds, hedge funds and other investment houses to establish themselves in the city. Hong Kong’s IPO market remains brisk and is an important source of new wealth. Singapore is still a major wealth magnet. Rising Southeast Asian nations such as Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia keep minting new millionaires. 

DBS intends to appoint at least 600 relationship managers and platform engineers by the end of 2028; OCBC set out a target to hire 600 relationship managers in the consumer banking wealth business over the next three years; HSBC intends to hire 100 relationship managers across its premier and private banking segments over the next two years; Citigroup plans to hire about 100 private bankers globally, with a significant chunk in Asia; Julius Baer's Asian business is an importing hiring area.

It’s obvious why this expansion is happening. According to Boston Consulting Group in November last year, by 2029, private wealth in the region is projected to reach $99 trillion.

Take the case of Citigroup to illustrate how important Asia has become. Asia wealth business (including Japan, Asia North, Australia, Asia South) delivered about $3 billion in revenue last year, which is about 35 per cent of the bank’s global wealth revenue.

Build or buy?
A question that repeats over the years is how many of these private bankers and RMs can be home-grown via graduate/post-graduate programmes, and how many can be brought in by hiring from rivals? The latter option can be an expensive business and adds to a “merry-go-round” career path for some bankers that might not sit well with clients hoping for long-term relationships. (See this interview with Julius Baer on the talent management question.)

Some of this demand explains why jurisdictions have made a point of boosting talent development, as this publication found when it interviewed Singapore Management University earlier this year. A question is how far and fast such home-grown talent building can be scaled up at a price bank' cost-conscious C-suites are prepared to pay. It certainly means business schools and bank-sponsored training programmes are important. 

Demand for talent also explains why AI, whatever else one might think of it, is being embraced as a productivity booster. Take the case of HSBC in Singapore. The bank has established a Global AI Centre of Excellence in the city-state and said it plans to hire more than 100 AI specialists, working with teams responsible for areas such as wealth management. 

Cracking the productivity code is crucial even if banks succeed in adding new RMs. Of course, it is the net figures that matter. In our regular coverage of wealth management moves and changes, there are departures as well as arrivals. 

Recruiting client-facing RMs also requires more middle- and back-office support, even though AI might cut some of those numbers in time. A report by the Business Times (of Singapore), on 12 July, quoted the executive search firm Ethos BeathChapman as estimating that a private bank seeking to recruit 50 RMs would need about 30 additional middle and back-office employees.

Considering that the human element continues to make up a large slice of private banking and wealth management costs, the firms making these hires will hope they bear ample fruit.