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 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.