Earlier this year China Merchants Bank's Liu Jianjun spoke of his ambition to make his bank the largest private bank in Asia.
China Merchants Bank (CMB), which operates China’s largest private bank, has ambitions to double the number of its relationship managers (RM's) in Hong Kong to around 500 within the next three years.
At present CMB has in the region of 200 RMs in Hong Kong. Finding 300 fresh faces in the space of three years sounds an unreachable target especially with the fight for wealth management talent that has been raging across Asia not just in Hong Kong, for the past decade.
Lack of Talent
The dearth of talent in the industry has seen established heavyweights like UBS, Credit Suisse and others developing their own talent by setting up wealth academies. CMB will also be up against pure play private banks such as Julius Baer who hired extensively in Asia in recent years.
«The talent pool in Hong Kong is good, but we have different corporate culture being a mainland financial institution. So there is a process for newly joined talents to adapt to our culture,» said Wang Jing, general manager of CMB Private Bank in a recent interview with Asian Investor (registration required).
In April this year China Merchants Bank launched a new private banking center in Singapore, part of its plan to follow the growing flow of Chinese wealth into international markets.
