Wealth managers are actively seeking to recruit top talent to fuel their expanding businesses, but the lack of supply of quality candidates ...

Wealth managers are actively seeking to recruit top talent to fuel their expanding businesses, but the lack of supply of quality candidates means that they will increasingly have to grow their business by taking staff from other banks. But salaries might not be as high as many expect, despite strong demand.

These and other findings were the product of a recent survey of the UK wealth management sector by London-based executive search firm Gow & Partners. The research found that out of the wealth managers surveyed, 96 per cent said they saw the total number of relationship managers rising, compared with just 4 per cent that said they did not.

Gow’s research found that the projected needs of the number of relationship managers from the sample group asked would grow by 24.9 per cent in 2006. “You can’t grow this amount by training alone,” Mark Somers, head of the private banking and wealth management practice at Gow, told WealthBriefing. “There will be net donors of relationship managers and net beneficiaries.”

The survey found that as many as 57 per cent of private bankers say they will recruit from other sectors to fill the demand, but in reality most continue to recruit from within their own sector.

This was born out by the research, which found that 71 per cent of recent recruitment had come from other wealth managers, and only 18 per cent from asset management and the same amount from investment banks.

Salary Survey
Gow also did some interesting research into salary and bonus trends in the wealth management sector — which indicates that salaries might not be as high as many would expect.

The research found that of 20 banks surveyed those relationship managers with 3-5 years post qualification were paid an average of ÂŁ55,000 ($100,215) and a bonus of ÂŁ11,000. The highest reward in the sample group was paid ÂŁ100,000 and a bonus of ÂŁ25,000, but this total remuneration package was paid by only one bank in the survey. The lowest salary in this category was ÂŁ35,000 with a bonus of ÂŁ4,000.

Those with 5-10 years experience had a market average of £77,000 and a bonus of £28,000. The highest salary paid was £150,000 with a bonus of £38,000 — again only one bank — and the lowest was a salary of £40,000 with a bonus of £9,000.

Salary levels for director-level positions, those with more than 10 years experience, averaged out at ÂŁ105,000 with a bonus of ÂŁ40,000. The highest earner in this category received a base salary of ÂŁ200,000 with a bonus of ÂŁ50,000 (one bank) and the lowest received a salary of just ÂŁ50,000, but a big bonus of ÂŁ35,000.

Gow also found that many wealth managers have high expectations about the level of assets they want relationship managers to gather within the first two years.

One wealth manager, apparently at the top of the food chain, wanted those between 5-10 years of experience to bring in as much as ÂŁ200 million within the first two years. The same wealth manager expected those with between 3-5 years experience to gather around ÂŁ70 million.

Gow was not able to tell WealthBriefing the name of the firms which took part in the survey because of client confidentially.

Further details of this survey can be obtained from Mark Somers at Gow & Partners.
mark.somers@gowpartners.com