Overview

The Wealth Management industry is experiencing unique growth, driven by the large amounts of money available to be managed through superannuation contributions and a growing upper income bracket population.  The growing amount of wealth under management creates a number of career opportunities within wealth management, as businesses expand and new niche companies come into existence.  Opportuniteis exist within the specialist Wealth Management areas, including Financial Planning, Private Banking and Private Client Advising.    Opportunities available in Wealth Management would range from full Private Client positions to Private Client Support, Associate Advisors, Financial Planning Support and a varied range of Wealth Management operations roles.

The clients within this space include the Wealth Management businesses of large Investment Banks, who are keen to profit from this expanding area.  Additionally, given their retail distribution networks, Australian banks have quite aggressively expanded their wealth management business with the Australian big four banks actively recruiting in this area. 

On from this, there is a long list of specialist Australian Wealth Management businesses that have strong high net worth client networks, and we should also include well established Stockbroking businesses that would be classed as being within the Wealth Management space, given their high net worth client focus.

Positions

• Private Client Advisors
• Associate Advisors
• Private Bankers
• Financial Planners
• Paraplanners
• Retail Structured Product Sales
• High-Net-Worth Advisory Roles
• Wealth Management Graduates

Wealth Management 2010 Market Trends

Wealth Management is a rapidly growing sector of the Australian Financial Services industry, due partly to the introduction of compulsory pension or superannuation payments approximately nine years ago.  2009 was a mixed year for the Wealth Management sector with limited recruitment given consolidation in the industry and a weak retail market. Throughout 2010 we would expect the Wealth Management space to gradually strengthen as the M& activity within this space settles and there is a further shortage of staff. As was widely reported in 2009 several large wealth management firms were changing hands, and this consolidation within the wealth management sector is continuing in to 2010. As a result, many of the large firms that would typically be involved in hiring in this space are pausing any recruitment until any consolidation of their businesses takes place.

Wealth Management recruitment at the Front Office level remains reasonably subdued, and our clients are focused on advisors and planners who are able to bring a set of clients with an established portfolio of assets that are able to come with the advisor. Lower level financial planning recruitment seems to have remained constant although this is mainly occurring with the larger retail banks and big financial planning groups.

Operations and Middle Office staff within Wealth Management will find that the market remains quite stable. The Operations & Middle Office teams within Wealth Management are reasonably small with our clients, although the range of opportunities seems to be remaining stable and strengthening in 2010. The larger fund manager and financial planning firms will start to be more active in building Operations & Middle Office teams after reducing the size of these groups in 2009.

Overall we are finding the Wealth Management sector remains slow, although we expect that this area will increase in hiring throughout the course of 2010.