XP, whose wealth-management clients have at least $200,000 to invest with the firm, has capitalized on the departures by grabbing customers and bankers from competitors leaving the city, Amaral said. Earlier this month, XP hired Tulio Gargantini and Gabriel Jafet, both former RBC and Barclays executives, as directors for wealth management in Miami.

Itau, whose wealth-management clients in Miami typically have more than $1 million in liquid assets, expanded its operations in the city in 2006 with the purchase of Bank of America Corp.’s BankBoston business and with the 2007 acquisition of ABN Amro Bank NV’s Latin American private-banking assets serviced in Miami.

More recently, Itau consolidated its Luxembourg private- banking operation to Switzerland and Miami. It has about $20 billion in assets under management outside Brazil.

“Brazilians discovered Miami is a very interesting place to live, to have vacations, to have second homes,” Sevilla- Sacasa said. “Some are doing business here and bringing their families to become residents.”

U.S. Residents

Itau can’t work with U.S. residents because of its regulatory structure, though that could change if the firm decides to make adjustments in response to increasing demand.

“Many of our clients have an apartment or a house in Miami and they spend time in Florida, but not enough time to be considered U.S. residents,” Sevilla-Sacasa said. “This could change in the future.”

Brazil’s crime rate may convince more to make the move. The nation had 23.7 homicides for every 100,000 residents in 2013, according to the most recent data from the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, while in U.S. the rate was 4.5, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Sao Paulo state, the nation’s richest, robbery cases grew 21 percent in 2014, to 309,948, the highest in 14 years, while homicides fell 3.4 percent to 4,294, according to the state’s Security Secretary.

Gribel’s firm is a unit of Andorra-based Andbank, which has 22 billion euros ($24 billion) in assets under management globally.

“We have a broker dealer in Miami, an advisory company, and our focus is to expand Latin American wealth management,” said Michael A. Blank, managing director at Andbank, adding that the firm has about 18 employees in Miami and plans to build a team with about 25 or 30 people this year.