The quick response is the market will be described as “hot”, “spicy” or any other food-like metaphor to suggest a boom. Others will suggest that the market is still green and the quicker you get there the better you will do.

In reality, these remarks are at best superficial, and at worst are out of touch with the real pressures being faced by bankers on the ground in the region today.

The reality is yes the market has been growing fast, with 10 to 15 per cent per annum growth among high net worth individuals for the past 3 to 5 years for the major markets. Indeed, Asia-Pacific growth has been fast, relative to its other global rivals, but also in absolute terms. So fast, that most chief executives across the globe can name at least three cities in China and possibly get close to telling you what ASEAN stands for.

However, the litmus test is how much of this new money is actually coming into the wealth management sector. Further, are the banks and asset managers positioned the right way to truly capture the new assets purportedly mushrooming out of the region?

The client reality is that both customers and prospects from Osaka to Jakarta and beyond are well aware that the difference between the banks – particularly the international ones – vying for business is limited. They know they have a choice and this is a buyers market if you know what to buy and where to look.

The compression forced by this similarity is being felt mostly on margins. Indeed, while some banks in the region may be claiming strong asset under management growth, this is often at an unsustainable price in the long term according to financial data now coming to the table.

In response to the compression on revenues, occurring at the same time as escalating costs, these banks are relying on their relationship managers to up-sell the relationship in due course. But this is going to be tough without any compelling proposition to up-sell to.

Moreover, the reality in the region is that there is still a higher propensity among many clients to initially not value banks for much beyond execution – and thereby the revenue to be had from clients can be very cyclical.

In fact, right now, it is evident that many clients in the region, having witnessed several major international banks do massive write-downs and “old world” recession settle in for the long haul, are sceptical of the true capabilities of the business.

They ask themselves: “Perhaps I can do better myself for a little longer?” Banks are being a little slow to realise this and that is partly because they can trick themselves into not believing it yet as there is limited market data. However, at the front line many bankers have a slightly exhausted look on their faces, which could also be the look of fear that they know the game is up.

Indeed Asian-Pacific clients are not green to the offerings of the industry. Arguably, many of the primary wealth holders in this region have been clients of the financial services sector for decades.

Names like Pictet, UBS and Goldman Sachs trip off their tongue easily. The cognoscenti will be very comfortable even naming underlying boutique asset managers and talk about investment gurus on first name terms. This is a region where access counts almost as much as credit. Banks that don’t really offer this are losers.

Not only that, the clients in this region are able to clearly articulate what the underlying propositions of the competing firms are and may even be able to discuss the discounting options that each may offer. In fact, this region’s clients is among the most advanced, and possibly toughest, in terms of market knowledge that we encounter during regular business feedback reviews on private banks. This should be a wake-up call for the banks.

Of course, the regional bankers will then cite to us that there is always the classic Jakarta-based entrepreneur who still rarely strays from speaking Bahasa, would rather never talk about his offshore money openly, and probably does not challenge fees. Or they might cite the Chinese mainlander that has seen exponential wealth creation in the last 24 months but to whom travelling abroad is anathema since he can make 200 per cent in his personal wealth at home, but he does not question the need for a small, no questions asked, nest egg.

In essence these clients are the ones that prefer the hermetic confidentiality and discretion offered by traditional old school private bankers. These are clients that help the traditional private bankers believe the party is still going on. Granted there are clients like this there, but this is increasingly the extraordinary rather than the ordinary.

Indeed, the sun on a new day has already risen. The market is changing before all our eyes. It is globalising not just in the functions of wealth management, but also in the absolute needs of clients. Banks must think about ways to step up to the challenge.

Banks are finding that the clients that they must seek to win are actively interested in creating more wealth and using the banks to achieve that. These clients want the banks to work with them in an onshore, and offshore, context. They want to have the banks upgrade their relationship promises and this will be supported by enhanced corporate banking capabilities.

In fact, the investment management is important but not a game changer to most. What is important is that the banks are showing themselves to be sustainably competitive on price, product and proposition. This will raise the inevitable spectre of whether the bank has an effective platform to support this.

Many banks must realise that they have to modernise in this region or die. The tough part of this is that they should have listened to this several years back when there was momentum and cash flow. Now, they are running on fumes. And many more clients than they realise are already aware of this.