Foreign private banks in Australia are slowly starting to hire again, a year after the global financial crisis put paid to their growth plans.

Earlier this week UBS announced that it wants to expand its 120-strong private banking team to 160 by 2014.

The time-scale means this hardly counts as a hiring boom, but it is significant that UBS – which was previously suffering staff departures – is now discussing expansion.

There are also sector-wide signs that global private banks are at last able to openly recruit in Australia, rather than just opportunistically take on bankers who approach them with bulging client books.

“Private banking has increased across the board. With the market picking up, it’s a good time to grow,” says Caan Krsztew-Ivanow, a search consultant at H Capital.

Firms are moving ahead with mandates that were previously on standby, according to Paula Horta, a consultant at the Brooklyn Group.

“A lot of their expansion was planned before the financial crisis but only now can they begin to hire again. I have a candidate who had his first interview in March and finally the bank has said it wants to move forward quickly,” she adds.

But before you start dreaming about joining an international private bank, bear in mind that the likes of UBS are mainly interested in hiring established relationship managers who can bring over a large chunk of their existing clients. “To be an advisor you must grow into the job, you can’t move into it from another function,” says Horta.

Hiring will be small scale for the foreseeable future, dominated by global firms poaching from each other and the occasional case of an RM leaving to join the Big Four as the domestic players try to muscle into the high-net-worth market.