Senior DBS manager departs for top role at Chinese bank

Amid the interview delays and hiring freezes caused by the coronavirus, wealth management recruitment is still taking place.  

Joseph Hiu, a member of the leadership team at DBS Treasures, the Singaporean firm’s wealth unit, has left to become head of wealth management at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB), according to his LinkedIn profile.

He joined SPDB earlier this month and is “responsible for growing the private wealth management business”, according to his LinkedIn profile. This suggest that more wealth management recruitment is on the cards at SPDB, a joint-stock Chinese commercial bank which has offices in Hong Kong and in Singapore’s Marina Bay Financial Centre.

Hiu moved to DBS in May 2014 as head of DBS Treasures Offshore, the team that caters to the offshore banking needs of affluent individuals across Asia Pacific, according to the DBS website.

Prior to DBS, Hiu spent more than 15 years at Citi in Singapore. He worked in the customer acquisition team from 1998 to 2004, eventually becoming a senior business development manager and unit head. Hiu then worked in customer/client franchise development roles until 2014, latterly as a senior vice president and business development head, responsible for the offshore and non-resident Indian (NRI) segment.

Hiu has joined a Chinese bank as expectations rise that mainland firms will try to tap more talent in Singapore and Hong Kong later this year. CICC chief executive Huang Zhaohui said earlier this month that the Covid-19 pandemic was an “excellent opportunity” to speed up the global expansion of the firm’s business and headcount. CICC’s plans follow a trend set in the months and years following the 2008 financial crisis, in which Chinese banks took on talent from Western competitors that were shedding staff.

Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash

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