Bloomberg reported that Banco Santander Brasil SA is planning to increase its headcount of 122 private bankers by upwards of 20 per cent this year as Brazil’s economic growth fuels demand for wealth management services. In an interview with Bloomberg, Maria Eugenia Lopez, head of Santander Brasil’s private-banking unit, said the positive economic moment Brazil is experiencing is supporting an aggressive growth of the private-banking business.

According to Lopez, the boom is not just because Brazilians are getting richer; but it’s also about the dynamics in the market, with more IPOs, more mergers and acquisitions and new businesses in general, she told Bloomberg.

Brazil is experiencing the fastest economic growth in more than two decades, including record expansions in credit and employment. The economic boom has given birth to new Brazilian billionaires as the growing Brazilian population and a burgeoning middle class push demand for private- banking services, reported Bloomberg. Brazil’s gross domestic product grew 7.5 per cent last year, the fastest since 1986, according to the nation’s statistics agency IBGE.

According to Bloomberg, the private-banking industry in Brazil ended 2010 with 371.2 billion reais, about $224.3 billion, of assets under management, a 23 per cent increase from 2009, as established by the Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Market Institutions, known as Anbima. The number of clients rose to more than 63,000 by yearend from about 57,000 in December 2009, Anbima said.

However, Bloomberg reported that assets under management at Santander Brasil’s private bank rose 25 per cent in the period. The minimum investment is 3 million reais at Santander while some other Brazilian banks include customers with more than 1 million reais in investments as private-banking clients, noted the report.

Lopez told Bloomberg that Santander is expanding its private-banking staff this year to face increasing competition from retail and investment banks that are entering the Brazilian market. According to Lopez, Private banking is an area that doesn’t require capital, so there are very few barriers to get into the business. She further added that Santander’s target is to continue expanding more than the market average.

Santander Brasil’s private-banking unit is finding more clients internally from the bank’s growing retail-services and investment-banking businesses, giving it access to more share sales and merger-and-acquisition deals, Lopez said. Grupo Santander is a banking group centered on Banco Santander, the largest bank in the Eurozone and one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalization.