Looking at the origin of commercial
banking, a banker is one who lends money for the purpose of
conducting commerce or trade. Since
then banking has evolved into providing loans of all kinds –
property, education, car, securities, etc. Banks have also gone to sell products – insurance,
investments, collateralised debts, all kinds of financial
derivatives including toxic ones! They
also sell services – custodial, underwriting, advisory,
etc. Thus, banks have all sorts of
clients. So, if one chooses to go into
banking, there are many areas of work.
Private banking is one which specialized in providing financial
advisory and services to high net worth individuals. Thus, if you are an individual (not a company)
worth millions you can get a bank to assign you a qualified and
experienced employee (called private banker) to attend to your
needs which can range from helping you invest your millions or
manage your huge estate.
Relationship Manager is a more recent term
used to designate an employee to sell financial products –
investment-linked insurance, structured deposits, saving schemes,
credit cards, and personal loans.
While a finance or banking qualification is
useful, it is not an absolute must to be a private banker or
relationship manager. A private banker
would have to be a very senior employee. I cannot imagine that my million$ will be handled
by a 24-yr old fresh graduate with a banking degree even if it is a
Master degree.
Even with a finance or banking
qualification banks will still train an employee in their products
or services. At the end of day, banks
will look at how much you sell and the ones who earn good money are
those who sell the most. This leads to
many hard-selling and even unscrupulous practices bordering on
‘misrepresentation’ or 'dishonesty'.
