LONDON: Deutsche Bank plans to hire 300 more relationship and investment mangers for its wealth management business by 2021, as part of a plan to bulk up in areas the German lender hopes will bring steadier revenue streams.
Deutsche Bank is in the middle of a major restructuring as it tries to shrink its investment bank that has struggled to generate sustainable profits since the 2008 financial crisis.
The shake up is expected to lead to thousands of job cuts in areas like equities trading.
Chief executive Christian Sewing wants instead to allocate more resources to businesses that have more stable revenue streams, with wealth management one of them.
“This drive to grow our business is now materialising with a big investment push,” Fabrizio Campelli, global head of Deutsche Bank Wealth Management said in an interview.
Under Campelli’s plan the number of relationship and investment managers will grow by 300 — around a third of the current numbers — globally. They will be spread across its America, Europe and Emerging Markets regions.
“We need to increase significantly our client footprint, which means the net increase of client facing individuals needs to be material,” he said.
Wealth management is attractive to banks as it requires less capital and its earnings tend to be less cyclical.
But it is also highly competitive. Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse are already big players, with wealth management at the heart of their business models, while upstart fintech companies are also trying to make inroads. “The space is very crowded and the market is one that many banks have sought to make a mark on,” said Campelli, who has run the business at Deutsche since October 2015.
“We looked at trends we believe Deutsche Bank wealth management can be particularly relevant in and within those areas we are making some very targeted investments”.
Campelli said trends they are particularly focused on include the growth in entrepreneurial — as opposed to family — wealth, the increasing number of family offices, and the rise of millennial high net worth individuals, who tend to manage their wealth differently from previous generations. — Reuters
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