TAIWAN’s private banks are grappling with a talent crunch in their bid to target the island’s growing US$7 trillion pool of wealth, forcing firms to boost compensation as they struggle to fill positions.
As global banks like UBS Group AG and HSBC Holdings Plc square off with local powerhouses, base salaries for elite wealth managers have climbed about 40% over the past five years in some instances.
Top-tier candidates are fetching sign-on bonuses and guaranteed annual packages of around NT$10mil (US$315,000), according to recruitment firms.
Despite these incentives, the talent gap remains wide. Some firms are struggling to meet headcount targets. Headhunters say actual job placements are lagging behind the fast-growing hiring mandates from financial industry clients.
Taiwan’s wealthy face growing urgency to manage their fortunes. An artificial intelligence (AI) boom is lifting asset prices and valuations at firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Quanta Computer Inc, helping make the island one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
It also reflects a broader shift in Asia’s private banking industry, toward deeper client relationships and succession expertise.
HSBC plans to increase its Taiwanese wealth headcount by 10% this year, joining a crowded field of lenders racing to service the island’s burgeoning millionaire class.
The growth is staggering, with E.Sun Bank reporting its high-net-worth client assets jumped more than 50% in 2025. The rush has lured a mix of competitors, from state-backed lenders and securities firms to legacy family offices.
Standard Chartered Plc has built up a team of 400 relationship managers in Taiwan after adding around 70 hires last year, and is still expanding.
New wealth account openings grew by “multiples” in January alone, placing the island among the bank’s top three global wealth markets by profit, the lender said.
Hiring has accelerated further in 2026 across various roles, driven by strong confidence in AI-led growth, said Iris Chen, principal consultant at Adecco Group AG’s Taipei arm.
The company’s clients posted more than 100 private banking and wealth management positions last year, but filled only about 20% of those, she said.
The mismatch underscores a bottleneck in Taiwan’s ambition to establish itself as a wealth hub.
Years of tight regulation and a preference among the wealthy to hold assets offshore have pushed some of the island’s top bankers to financial centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
Base salaries for private bankers in Taiwan are now roughly two-thirds of those in Hong Kong, a sharp increase from a few years ago when the gap was far wider, according to Gary Cheng, founder of headhunting firm U-Catch Consulting.
Wu, a Taiwanese private banker at an European firm, said he has received more than 20 inquiries in the past year from headhunters representing financial firms in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Switzerland – the most aggressive outreach of his decade-long career.
Taiwan’s total household wealth will reach US$9 trillion by 2029, up from around US$7 trillion last year, according to a report by CTBC Bank and Boston Consulting Group earlier this year.
“AI is fuelling the rise of Taiwanese new money and clients are increasingly asking a key question: how do I pass my wealth to the next generation?” said Hsu Che-kun, BNP Paribas SA’s head of Taiwan wealth management.
Onshore, many relationship managers have traditionally focused on selling financial products – an approach that generates trading fees and big bonuses but often falls short with ultra-rich clients.
To bridge that gap, firms are reshaping training. E.Sun Bank has flown private bankers to Japan and Europe for musicals and art shows, requiring them to review performances and paintings to better engage clients.
It’s also shifting bankers from its corporate and retail units into private banking and pairing new hires with senior mentors to accelerate learning.
Relationship managers at Cathay United Bank are required to take monthly classes to refine their understanding of high-end lifestyles, from art investing to luxury collectibles. The firm has also introduced subsidies for bankers to attend boot camps in golf, wine and tea appreciation, as well as luxury yacht management.
“You need to make yourself useful in all sorts of things,” said Robert Fuh, executive vice-president at Cathay United Bank, one of Taiwan’s biggest lenders.
“Understand markets, know the best schools because your clients care about education, speak their language and cater to their interests. Peddling wealth management instruments just won’t cut it.”
Cheng from U-Catch Consulting said Taiwan’s pool of qualified candidates remains very small, citing a severe shortage of private bankers in the job market.
“Supply simply hasn’t kept up with surging demand,” he said.
While demand for bankers is strong, those with at least a decade of experience are especially sought after.
Taiwan’s wealthy clients - most of them veteran businessmen and senior tech executives – prefer advisers who, like themselves, have navigated multiple market cycles, from the global financial crisis to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kevin Hu, head of international wealth and premier banking division at HSBC Taiwan, recently told managers to sharpen networking skills of junior colleagues that make a big difference in relationship building.
Elsewhere, global lenders are hiring aggressively in Hong Kong, offering pay increases of up to 25% as the super-rich regain interest in the city after the war in the Middle East dents appeal for Dubai.
Wealth managers in Singapore are also seeing rising inflows that support hiring, while in India, global and local firms are rapidly scaling up to serve a growing wealthy population.
For Taiwan’s rich, tensions between the island and Beijing continue to drive significant offshore allocation – a trend that keeps some senior bankers abroad, closer to where clients’ assets are held.
As the talent hunt intensifies, job-hopping is becoming more common.
“They might spend two or three years at one bank, and if things don’t work out, they move to another, and then another,” said Adecco’s Chen. — Bloomberg
Betty Hou writes for Bloomberg. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
