If wealth management is to grow successfully and maintain the highest standards of client service, firms that try to get by through poaching staff from rivals will find this ploy proves to be expensive if the talent pool does not expand with a strong graduate intake. 

Consequently, graduate and post-graduate training and development in the sector is a vital, long-term process. In terms of Master of Business Administration courses for post-graduates, for example, there are as yet few courses available, but a longer list of other certification programmes does exist.

Courses and institutions.

-- Edinburgh Napier University, UK. It operates an MSc in Wealth Management.

-- Executive MBA in Asset and Wealth Management – Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.

-- Executive MBA in Asset and Wealth Management – HEC Lausanne, Faculty of Business and Economics  at the University of Lausanne.

-- Singapore Management University, which operates an MSc in wealth management alongside the Swiss Finance Institute. In 2009, Yale University was added as an academic partner.

-- Wharton. The US business school, under the leadership of Professor Chris Geczy, has a “wealth management initiative”. Its wealth management courses fall mainly within the school’s Executive Education division; it does not have a stand-alone MBA for wealth management, however. Undergraduate and MBA students may take courses that include related issues.

-- Association of International Wealth Management. Set up in 2007 in Switzerland by Baker & McKenzie. It has created the Certified International Wealth Management Diploma.

-- UBS Business University Wealth Management Campus, Singapore. The organisation, run by the Swiss bank, adopts the Singapore Banking and Finance’s Financial Industry Competency Standards, established in 2005. (WealthBriefingAsia, recently covered the organisation here.)

-- MBA In Global Asset and Wealth Management, by Simon Fraser University Vancouver, Canada.

-- MSc in Financial Planning and Wealth Management, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.

-- CFA Institute, Charlottesville, VA (The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts). It operates a CFA programme that has been dubbed “the gold standard” by the Financial Times and “the global passport” by The Economist magazine. The CFA programme addresses issues such as tax-efficient wealth accumulation, cross-border estate planning, client communication strategies and financial planning. Contact www.cfainstitute.org

-- BPP - CISI Masters in Wealth Management.

At present, the following business schools do not, as far as this publication was able to find out, provide specific MBAs for wealth management, although the sector can be included as part of other MBA courses and feature in course curricula. The schools are: Harvard Business School; Yale School of Management; Columbia Business School and Wharton (see above). As also mentioned, Yale University is working with the SFI  and Singapore Management University on an MSc programme.

A number of firms provide their own in-house training for graduates, such as Credit Suisse and Coutts.