why being multi lingual helps in business?

Dear Son
Here is an interesting article on what banks are asking for in their new recruits into the private banking world. You should be considering what would be good for you. You are numerate and you are very personable. What you are missing out on is the multi-lingual aspect.
Being multilingual helps, son, it helps you have a broader appreciation of the world, know about other cultures, be able to understand others. More importantly, it helps you make more money and be more successful in business. So if you are considering improving yourself, have a think about trying to improve on your language skills. If nothing else, try to get your Hindi up to speed, its not difficult, we can all speak Hindi at home. You should also consider other languages such as Mandarin or Spanish. It will really help you to a considerable degree. I am not saying that you need to be an expert, you need to have conversational skills and at the most, be able to read a newspaper, that's enough for the requirements of business.
Have a think, Mamma has some basic Hindi books at home, perhaps we all can start on it? Do you think that will help?
Love
Baba

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9befe24-f991-11e0-bf8f-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1eKLB1Ut2
Search for talent: Only the trilingual, numerate and personable need apply
By Elaine Moore
What skills make the perfect wealth manager?
Charm, certainly. Contacts, maybe. But as the private banking industry seeks to attract a new generation of clients across a wider map than ever before, a new set of talents is in demand.
Multilingual, personable graduates equally at ease discussing complex structured products and safe haven assets are needed by private banks to fill offices in some of the world’s fastest growing economies.
But finding the right recruits is not easy.
HSBC has increased the number of places on its graduate scheme in the last year, but requirements are tough.
Prospective hires must be proficient in at least three languages, have a strong academic background and a genuine enthusiasm for the financial world, says Charles Hoffman, managing director at HSBC Private Bank.
Those who make the grade are offered a four- to eight-week graduate programme, followed by three six-month rotations, during which they are seated with experienced private bankers who specialise in client relationship management, support functions or product development. At the end of the process the new recruits should be ready to take on their own clients.
Carol Costa joined the HSBC scheme from her home country of Brazil and is embedded in the London office on her first rotation.
She says the worldwide movement and opportunity to spend time with senior management is an amazing way to start a career, although the reality of training has differed from her expectations of instant glamour and client meetings.
The first month of technical instruction underlined the fact that a career in private banking requires knowledge of services and products, not just client relationship building.
And finding the people with the right mix of talents who can fulfil these roles can be hard. In search of fresh pools of talent many private banks have been increasingly turning to lateral hires.
Coutts, one of the UK’s oldest private banks, has launched a pilot programme aimed at employees in different areas of the financial industry as well as its own staff who understand the high net worth market and can be trained in its own platform and products to become private bankers.
The bank has been explicit about its hopes to drive up revenue in its overseas business by more than half in the next few years.
Along with much of the industry, it is hoping to expand its remit from conventional private banking to investment management, and has raised its minimum requirement for investable assets that clients must hold from £500,000 to £1m.
Seeking out those with a non-private banking background who may have the right relationship skills, or have experience in a particular area outside the world of wealth management, has been a success, says Elsa Critchley, head of HR at Coutts.
This is particularly the case in those markets where there is a wide shortage of quality private bankers, such as Asia.
In countries that lack a large pool of candidates from which to pick, other banks have been setting up schools to train graduates in the art of wealth management.
Credit Suisse runs its own corporate university with a business school in Singapore and Hong Kong. Citigroup has also run a wealth management associates programme at Citi Private Bank Asia Pacific since 2006 to funnel a pool of potential employees through its doors.
But the effort involved pays off, according to Paul Patterson, global head of trust at RBC Wealth Management, and goes beyond the individual’s contribution to the bank.
“Our experience is that our graduate trainees relate to, and become important advocates of, our corporate culture, which we see as a key differentiator in the market,” he says.
But smaller wealth managers without the resources to set up their own schools or schemes have had to take a more informal approach.
Société Générale Private Banking Hambros says it uses a variety of methods to find and develop wealth managers.
“Being a relatively small bank we do not have a formal structured graduate trainee scheme,” says Phil Mcilwraith, group commercial director. “Our approach is more informal, recruiting both experienced wealth managers and other individuals with the potential to succeed.”
This process allows managers to work with SGPB Hambros teams in different locations or in different parts of the organisation.
The scheme may be less formal, but the time the bank spends educating new recruits on its own product range is substantial, and reducing attrition is essential for schemes like this one to earn its keep.
The answer, according to some, is to ensure that graduates forge connections across the bank that will last beyond the specific time of the training scheme. In other words: mentors.
HSBC, for example, appoints mentors who are responsible for graduates throughout their rotations and can provide guidance, support and encouragement during and after the programme.
This year Coutts began a slightly different mentoring model. Its reverse mentoring scheme requires young members of the private bank, typically graduate trainees, to be allocated senior executives and tasked with educating them in the mysterious world of social networking, virals and trolls in a process that lasts between six months to a year.
The purpose is to help senior bank staff gain a better grip of the ways that young clients might communicate and interact – typically through technology – and to encourage new employees to make connections with established bankers.
Coutts says it plans to roll out the scheme across all of its offices.