The Hong Kong Campus of the UBS Business University opened yesterday in response to increasing demand for financial talent in the region.

The new campus located at Li Po Chun Chambers in Sheung Wan, UBS’s second in Asia, will train new employees and offer professional development courses to existing staff. Training will be delivered by senior managers and subject experts.

The campus opening highlights how training at graduate and post-graduate level remains a key issue for wealth managers in regions such as Asia, where firms and consultants have sometimes warned that banks may struggle to find sufficient high-quality staff to meet client demand. (To view a recent WealthBriefing article on this issue, click here).

The Swiss banking firm’s first foray into the world of academia was the launch of the UBS Wealth Management Campus at Singapore’s Command House in 2007.

The Singapore campus was subsequently re-launched as the UBS Business University, created in 2010 with the aim of bringing the firm’s training and education programmes together and making them easily accessible to UBS trainees and staff worldwide through the internet.

Allen Lo, country head of UBS in Hong Kong said talent in the region was “scant”, emphasising the need for a campus in Hong Kong.

Growing UBS and meeting clients’ needs “require more educated, qualified employees” said Chi-Won Yoon, co-chairman and CEO of UBS AG, Asia Pacific in a press release, adding that the new campus will “go a long way towards making sure everyone at UBS in Asia is best in class”.

The two Asian UBS Business University campuses complement two existing education and conference centres maintained by the firm in Switzerland.

The Asian business university team includes staff from Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Melbourne, Beijing and Taipei. To date, the Singapore campus has hosted around 24,000 training days and approximately 2,000 training events. In 2010, UBS employees participated in a total of 453,000 classes globally.