One of the "big three" Singapore banks talks about its expansion plans for RMs.

DBS, the Singapore-headquartered bank, intends to increase headcount among relationship managers by between 10 and 20 per cent during 2018, adding to a team that so far has 200 private bankers, Bloomberg quoted a senior executive as saying.

Hiring will be spread across the three main teams covering Southeast Asia, North Asia, and international markets plus Indians living abroad, Lawrence Lua, deputy head of private banking, told the news service.

"Our clients, the wealthy, have grown their businesses. They have cash flow, more liquidity," Lua was quoted as saying.

The expansion by the bank contrasts, to some extent, with moves by some non-domestic players, such as Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, ABN AMRO, Barclays, Societe Generale and Coutts to spin off Asian wealth assets in recent years. (In those cases, the firms either sold because of a failure to reach profitable mass, or because of a need to focus on home markets, or both.) However, other major international players, such as UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer, BNP Paribas, Citi and HSBC, among others, continue to expand RMs. In the case of UBS, for example, it has boosted hiring in parts of Hong Kong, such as Kowloon and the New Territories. Credit Suisse has made Asia a key focus for growth at its private bank. 

As the DBS interview item makes clear, DBS and its peers aim to capture rising Asia-Pacific wealth, noting that assets owned by wealthy Asians rose 8 per cent in 2016 to $18.8 trillion (source: Capgemini).
Ironically, while demand for RMs appears to be rising at firms such as DBS, amid a continued increase in demand, there is also an issue, as this publication has noted, of experienced, older private bankers, often expats, finding themselves let go by their banks and needing to transition. WealthBriefingAsia recently interviewed a practitioner in the space who is trying to help this segment of the workforce.