Is 2026 Set to Be the Biggest Churn Year Yet for Wealth Leadership?

Wealth Managers Are Becoming the Most Valuable Distribution Channel

It is common to hear about senior professionals from wealth management switching companies - Motilal to Nuvama, Barclays to UBS. It is a response to one core reality, wealth management is a relationship driven business and here, experienced wealth managers/bankers age like fine wine…higher the time spent in the business, deeper the relationships, and in turn more AUA(assets under advisory). Hiring these grey-haired or balding bankers is the fastest way to buy ‘growth’.

India’s wealth sector is heating up, with India now trailing only the US, China and Japan in terms of number of HNIs/UNHIs, according to a Knight Frank report. A long bull run in equities, repeated real estate upcycles, and a steady stream of liquidity events from technology and new age businesses have created a new cohort of affluent investors. They want more than products - they want advice, access, and a sense that someone is thinking about their full balance sheet.

Wealth firms are thriving off this shift, and the competitive set is widening. It is no longer only private banks and legacy wealth managers. Brokerages are building wealth arms. New age platforms are positioning themselves as private banking alternatives. Global firms want onshore scale, and domestic firms want offshore reach. As more platforms chase the same pool of wealthy families, demand for the top slice of relationship managers has spiked.

Experienced relationship managers are landing salary hikes of as much as 40%, while newer wealth management firms are offering bankers 50% or more of the revenue they generate, said Prateek Gupta, associate director, talent solutions for India, at consultancy Aon. ~ Bloomberg article (July 14, 2025)

There have been at least two high profile shuffles in the first half of this month alone. Lighthouse Canton appointed Gurjeet Sohi, formerly with Deutsche Bank, as Managing Director and Head of Wealth Management for India. Neo hired Puneet Matta, from UBS, as vice chairman to drive its private banking push. This trend is set to continue in 2026 and we’ll see more high-profile bankers moving places.

To understand the churn, it helps to separate job changes into two types.

The first is the traditional move, where a banker switches places to improve payouts, upgrade brand, or access a better product shelf. This has always existed in wealth.

The second is what has become more common in the last 18 to 24 months. These are builder roles. Firms are hiring senior people not just to manage a book, but to build a business. For senior bankers, these roles are appealing because they offer three things at once:

• Better economics, often with higher fixed pay and a more aggressive variable structure.

• More autonomy, especially in firms that are still scaling and need leaders who can make decisions quickly.

• More legacy, because building an institution is a different career milestone than simply running a larger book.

For firms, the decision is equally rational. Organic growth in wealth management is slow and fragile if you depend only on hiring juniors and waiting for books to mature. The learning curve is steep, and mistakes are expensive. One poor episode can break a relationship that took years to build.

A senior banker does not only bring a client book. They bring a working model for how to recruit and retain teams, how to segment clients, how to expand into new hubs, how to introduce investment governance, how to handle risk events without losing trust and how to sell higher value products such as discretionary mandates and alternatives without breaking client confidence. This is of incredible importance.

Lighthouse Canton, for example, has an ambition of doubling its AUM to $10 Billion by 2027. To bring in Gurjeet Sohi, is a ‘build’ role. It is a platform buildout, reinforced by additional leadership hires, Atin Kumar Saha (Vice Chairman, Wealth Management) and Sanjay Sharma (Executive Director, Wealth Management). Similarly, Neo’s hiring of Puneet Matta is also framed around expanding footprint in India.

At the same time, global private banks are deepening leadership benches city by city. Julius Baer, for example, appointed Guneet Singh as group head reporting to Umang Papneja, and named Mayur Bhat as team head in Mumbai, Deepak Chivukula as team head in Hyderabad, and Niloy Dey as team head in Kolkata. They’re building distribution depth.

And some firms are hiring to expand capability, not only coverage. Waterfield appointed Riddhiman Jain as Head of Investment Strategy and Solutions and Abhishek Damani as head of Alternative Investments, with CEO Soumya Rajan framing the hires as strengthening investment strategy and alternatives as demand rises.

This will intensify in 2026 because the structural forces are only getting stronger. The pool of wealthy families is expanding faster than the supply of seasoned advisors, competition between platforms is widening, and more firms are entering the wealth business with serious scale ambitions. At the same time, clients are demanding deeper advice, broader product access, and tighter risk management across their full balance sheet. In that environment, hiring experienced bankers becomes the fastest way to buy distribution, credibility, and operating maturity in one move. Expect more aggressive pay structures, more builder mandates, and more visible leadership churn as wealth firms race to secure the small cohort of people who can still move both money and institutions.