Asia has been producing millionaires at a faster pace than the number of private bankers to serve them, creating a talent gap likely to continue for the next few years, industry players say.
Asia needs 5,000 private bankers but has just 3,400, said Timothy Lo, managing director of French private bank CIC Investor Services.
"There is a serious talent gap because Asia, particularly China, has a lot of increasingly wealthy people who need private bank services," he said. "But most private banks base their biggest teams in the US or Europe."
The growth of millionaires in Asia has attracted many private banks to set up offices in Hong Kong as a stepping stone to investing on the mainland.
The mainland is currently the third-fastest producer of millionaires, after Japan and Kuwait, and had 758,000 people with more than US$1 million to invest in 2013, according to the World Wealth Report by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management.
The report also said Asia had 4.32 million high-net-worth individuals with US$1 million in liquid assets in 2013, just 10,000 short of the 4.33 million in North America. The total wealth of Asia-Pacific high-net-worth individuals rose 18 per cent to US$14.2 trillion in 2013, compared with 17 per cent growth in North America to US$14.88 trillion.