The days of heady hiring are over in wealth management as banks become much pickier about who they take on. The Big Four are trimming their underperformers and only hiring seasoned pros.

NAB led the pack this week by cutting 120 staff from MLC, its wealth management wing. The layoffs will mainly affect back-office employees, with investment managers the only ones to escape unscathed. The firm, which employed about 3900 people before the cuts, is blaming difficult trading conditions affecting its assets under management.

If you’ve been laid off at MLC, you face a job market which is already full of candidates. Plenty of people from other banking sectors want to break into wealth management, but banks are demanding experienced professionals, says Jane McNeill, senior regional director at recruiters Hays. “A year ago there were plenty of vacancies and an acute shortage of candidates, but now banks can demand far better qualified and experienced candidates,” she adds.

Wealth management hiring has decreased but not ceased, according to McNeill. “Up until November we didn’t see much of a slowdown, but recruitment has declined in December/January, although we believe much of this is seasonal.”

Hiring is concentrated on client-facing roles which generate revenue for banks, such as financial planners with business development skills. “The market has levelled out and some sensibility has returned. A year ago specialist roles such as paraplanners were commanding unrealistically high salaries,” says McNeill.

The large banks are currently focused on getting more business out of existing clients, says Ryan Webster, a senior consultant at recruiters Robert Walters. “There have been redundancies across the wealth management divisions of most banks because they are not growing their portfolios and they need to minimise their cost base moving into 2009,” he adds.

Operations people are most at risk if the banks cut more wealth management jobs. “Front-office roles are safer, but these positions can still be cut if bankers can’t generate sufficient revenue,” says Webster.

Some smaller financial planning firms are maintaining their workloads because clients recognise that they have to better manage their money through the current downturn, according to Webster. “In the last three years the boutiques have found it hard to recruit, so now they are keen to retain the staff that they fought so hard to get, instead of losing them and having recruitment difficulties when the market picks up.”