Research On The Competency Of The Customer Manager Of Hongkong Investment Bank

The financial markets have changed dramatically since the financial crisis led by the fell of Lehman Brothers. Private Banks has become one of the key investors of fixed income products where wealthy individual has lost confidence in other investment channel and would prefer stable investments with yield carry against low rate of deposit. Fixed income has therefore become one of the main revenue drivers for investment banks as well as an essential investment instrument for global money to invest. More and more investors have started to look at this product; the volume of global bonds issuances and transactions turnover has grown tremendously in recent years.On the other hand, China has been setting to liberalize its currencies and has set up various offshore CNY platforms in Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Taiwan. These platforms will increase the trading volume of CNY as well as helping to construct a yield curve which consists of CNY government and corporate bonds. As CNY gradually moving towards free floating; CNY fixed income products and bonds will surely become an important investment instruments for global investors to invest and; an alternative funding channel for Chinese companies to borrow from foreign investors.This research paper aims to map the competencies of Fixed Income Sales in Hong Kong; and also attempts to identify the different variants of being a Fixed Income Sales in compare of general salesperson in other industries. Fixed Income Sales are the main sales channel for fixed income products in investment banks, where they market bonds to institutional clients which includes Asset managements, central banks, private banks, hedge funds and banks; and some of these bonds will ultimately goes into the hands of private individuals. It is important to understand and study fixed income sales; as they are now the most profitable business segment for investment banking; their productivity can ultimately affects the growth for the whole financial sector and shape the growth of future bond markets in China and Asia.McClelland and Boyatzis are one of the first ones that use the word of competency; Boyatzis defined competency as "an underlying characteristic of a person... where it could be a motive, trait, skill, aspect of one’s self image or social role, or a body of knowledge which he or she uses." (p.64 Woodruffe 1993). Competencies shape a person overall capabilities which has a strong link with productivity. Identify these competencies will allow us to identical top and average salesperson and in turn facilitate futures recruitment and selection, development and training and personnel management for investment banks in Hong Kong.This research paper will conduct the research in 3 main section 1) Firstly the paper will studied pervious literature review on fields of various theories and models in competency, psychology, motivation, personality and salesperson model, personality traits model and competency-productivity relationship. There will be interviews conduct with senior management of various investment banks in identifying top sales competencies; and I will share my past experienced in the fixed income sales role as input for establishing the hypothesis.2) After proposing the hypothesis, the paper will define all the concepts or variants and design and revised the measurement scale for results of the test.3) A questionnaire will sent to a sample group of fixed income sales in order to test the hypothesis. Data will be analyzed at the end and the paper will discuss and concludes with a list of competencies for a top sales person.In summary, this papers concludes the list of performance competencies for Fixed Income sales, explore the relationship between competencies and productivity and the variants with salesperson working in investment banking sector compare with other industry. The Research paper concludes the competencies for Fixed income top sales includes some important ability such as 1) Multi-tasking in a very short time frame; 2) Able to work under high pressure environment; 3) Superb memory skills,4) Social analytical reasoning skills 5) Precise communication skills and 6) Economic logic sense with strong financial knowledge 7) Flexibility on procedures. Salesperson with these competencies will tend to be more productive and combinations of these competencies are not commonly the critical competencies for salesperson to perform in other industry. Furthermore, the paper also found out that different company cultures will also affects the overall productivity of fixed income sales. In order to develop a top sales team; manager will need to understand both the required differentiating competencies and how this person will fit-in under different bank’s culture.