Emirates NBD has doubled private banking team...and wants to hire more

Since launching its private banking centre in Dubai this year, Emirates NBD has been aggressively bolstering its team and now employs 50 relationship managers. And, after a relatively successful first nine months of 2009, is looking to grow further.

The wealth management sector in the Middle East has suffered of late, with the number of high net worth individuals in the region shrinking by 16.2% in 2008, according to the latest Merrill Lynch/Capgemini World Wealth Report.

Nonetheless, certain players in the region have been looking to grow, which has provided relatively healthy levels of recruitment throughout this year.

"There are broad opportunities in areas where we are unrepresented and we continue to hire," said Sanjay Uppal, Emirates NBD's CFO.

It's not the only firm hiring in this area. Last week Standard Chartered said it was planning on adding 50 relationship managers to its priority banking team, and Barclays Wealth has ambitions to expand in Saudi Arabia.

But, the age-old difficulty of finding relationship managers with sufficient local contacts and who can open doors to wealthy clients remains, suggests Sebastian Dovey, managing partner of wealth management advisor firm Scorpio Partnership.

"The appetite to expand sales distribution in the Middle East among the HNW sector is high," he says. "However, there is a significant constrain on the supply of true talent."

Still, while Emirates NBD has ambitions to expand its private banking team in the Middle East, the main area of focus, like so many other wealth managers, will be Asia. Uppal said that Singapore was a "sweet spot at this point in time".