He said that about 700 of the 4,000 Hang Seng Bank employees he led were sales-related. Besides relationship managers, other sales roles include customer service officers, direct sales team and insurance sales.

The bank periodically reviews salaries and makes adjustments. The last one was made for 2007 when bank employees received raises in the fixed portion of their pay of up to 12 per cent. Last year, there was also a variable bonus paid of up to 12 months for those managers up to senior manager level. Both were dependent on performance.

'Our people are so important we have to make sure they are paid adequately,' he said. 'The overall trend is to pay more on variable bonuses than to increase the fixed pay part.'

Pay varies from a monthly HK$15,000 for an average-performance junior sales level, to HK$60,000 for its relationship managers, who manage the mass affluent segment, to even higher sums for the bank's private bankers.

The bank also has a separate investment division, comprising about 60 people, including stock market specialists and those with mathematics doctorates. They are charged with designing new products to track investment instruments and to pick the stocks that go into the investment fund products it builds.

Standard Chartered Bank's general manager for wealth management Cindy Fu Man-yee, who heads a team of around 100 people focused on developing products to be sold by its delivery channels, said competent professionals of all kinds were constantly in demand. They range from product managers, who are in charge of the end-to-end process between conceiving ideas behind new products, to getting the investment vehicle out.

These managers are responsible for identifying customers' needs and wants, liaising with compliance personnel on regulatory matters and co-ordinating with banking operations staff to discuss the flow of how the product will be brought to the market.

Meanwhile, different types of products specialists visit bank branches to update frontline sales staff on the latest investment products available to consumers. Their roles are divided into different product categories, such as investment counsellors, insurance specialists and treasury specialists.

This department also employs its own team of research analysts, separate from its investment banking arm, to help its product managers build new products suited to the economy, and to help communicate to retail customers on the market outlook. It also employs compliance experts to help deal with the regulatory issues in bringing products to the market.