Private banks often get their recruiting strategies wrong when poaching staff from competitors, trying to retain their people merely through compensation and focusing performance solely on assets under management (AUM) from their new hires.
Date: Feb 2012
Tags: Hiring, Sales, Compensation
Panel Members
Panel Summary
Private banks often get their recruiting strategies wrong when poaching staff from competitors, trying to retain their people merely through compensation and focusing performance solely on assets under management (AUM) from their new hires.
These were some of the views of a panel of senior management at various private banks at the Hubbis Asian Wealth Management Forum 2012 in Hong Kong in early February.
And in commenting on these misconceptions and challenges, panel speakers shared some new perspectives in hiring and retention – pointing out the importance of cultivating a high-performance culture for new hires to increase their chances of success and enabling them to present the bank’s brand effectively.
Attracting talent
While panel members agreed that banks will generally keep hiring, ambitions of doing so will be more conservative than in previous years, in part as a result also of clients getting tired of shifting accounts and changing bankers.
"We are looking to grow, but the plan we have now is more targeted rather than just focusing on fitting the numbers in,” said Arjan de Boer, managing director and head of private banking for ABN AMRO Private Banking in North Asia. “We recently strengthened our recruitment policy to make it much more thorough.”
He added that although it is very difficult, it is important not to make mistake before even getting people on board, because these can be costly errors to make.
Added Henry Pang, managing director and head of wealth management for Taiwan at BNP Paribas Wealth Management: “For a period of time, the industry is going to be poaching staff among one another, but at some point, we need to look outside of the talent pool in order to increase the capacity.”
He said the challenge is to project the values of the industry to younger people and attract talent from outside the current labour force over time.
Retaining staff
In terms of a strategy to retain staff, Simon Lo, business strategy specialist, private banking, at Bank of China Macau, said that while 2011 was not a very good year for bonuses, his firm looks to pay its bankers a bit more than they expected. “We want to give them a signal that, if you are working fine, we want to work with you, to keep you with us as long as we can.”
In addition, Lo shared some “defensive side” strategies – providing bankers a comfortable environment to build up relationships with clients without having excessive target pressures, for example, through leisure events.
Meanwhile, Lok Yim, managing director and head of private wealth management for Deutsche Bank in North Asia, said that for really successful bankers over the long-term in this industry, compensation is not the only thing.
"When we have the chance to attract someone from A to B, normally it is not the pull factor on the compensation that defines it; usually there is a push factor that drives them out,” explained Yim. He said banks need to therefore identify and be aware of those push factors to avoid making the same mistakes.
Further, panel speakers agreed that banks need a good platform so that the banker will feel they would be successful in the long term and for their clients.
Equipping bankers to sell the brand
Key as part of a successful sales process is aligning new staff with the organisation’s goals and culture so that they can portray the bank’s brand in the best way possible.
Said Nick Pollard, chief executive officer for Coutts & Co in Asia: “The process starts quite a long time before the banker actually joins. What we try to do is to treat a new hire as if they were a client we are trying to get into the business.”
To do this, he said it is important to make sure any new hire is involved in the business and understands where it is going. This way, when they do join the organisation, they know the key people already.
Further, the panel said that banks need to engage new hires in what the firm stands for and in its history. Banks also need to keep in close touch with the recruits after they have started, buddying them up with someone who can see them through the first few months.
This will result in better performance in the long run, said the panel.
For more details of the Hubbis Asian Wealth Management Forum 2012 in Hong Kong, click on these links:
Video highlights: http://www.hubbis.com/video.php?vid=1329443439
Keynote Speech: http://www.hubbis.com/video.php?vid=1328849236
Forum website: http://www.hubbis.com/forum/wmf2012_hk/
For more details about our other forums in 2012, click here: http://www.hubbis.com/forum/
