Hays Finance Technology
January - March 2012
Hotspots
Key hotspots of hiring activity are evident in Wealth Management, Treasury, FX and Risk across all functions including Development, Analysis, Project Management and Support.
Front Office Developers with good FX skills are still in demand and we are seeing one or two banks looking for extremely strong functional programmers who have the unique ability to interact with a user base of theoretical Computer Scientists and Mathematicians who can really drive innovative, leading edge application development.
Developers with e-commerce experience also continue to be in high demand. Those with high-through put and ultra low latency platform development experience are in particular demand and speed to market is becoming essential in this increasingly competitive area.
Vendor led technology specialists also remain in demand with Murex, Wall Street and Core Banking Software experience still being amongst some of the most desired skill sets within Singapore.
Business Analysts with good business knowledge within Risk and Operational reporting continue to be sought due to more stringent regulatory requirements being introduced. Infrastructure support related roles continue to be offshored or outsourced for a lot of the junior level support/administrative functions including application support, system and network administration.
The contracting market is really starting to take off in Singapore and over the past quarter we have seen approximately a 20 per cent increase in hiring across both infrastructure and front office development related roles as organisations deal with reduced headcount and hiring freezes during what has been traditionally the budgeting season.
On a more general note the local or regional banks are really bucking the trend in terms of hiring and are continuing to make strategic or niche hires across both infrastructure and application development at a consistent pace. They are attracting more candidates due to their ability to distance themselves from economic events in other parts of the world, combined with their own regional growth.
The coming quarter
The ongoing volatility within the markets will continue to have a direct effect on hiring decisions in nearly all of the major investment banks. Most investment banks will be waiting to see what happens within the Eurozone and US markets and we are seeing a clear reluctance to start large-scale projects until the markets show a clearer sign of how they will pan out.
Based on feedback from employers, we expect hiring to pick up post Chinese New Year. At this stage, each individual hire is being scrutinised with decisions often requiring CIO level justification.
The rise of the Hedge Fund within Singapore is seeing some new players enter the market and as a result we expect highly technical and independent Support specialists to be hired within extremely entrepreneurial environments.
We also expect to see continued hiring across the Risk space. With more banks now moving to a centralised or consolidated risk environment that covers Market, Credit and Operational Risk from an IT perspective this will be focused on Basel III, Liquidity and Dodd Franks.
We expect that the key area of growth will be in the Private, Retail, Consumer Banking and Wealth / Asset Management sectors.
Executive recruitment
Internal mobility is still driving a lot of senior hires with most investment banks looking to relocate Senior Management from the US and Europe. We expect this to be an ongoing trend.
More specific senior level hiring is being seen across the Program and Project Management space where Front Office experience is crucial. VP level hiring remains generally slow.
Employer trends
Counter offers continue to be high with most employers looking to retain people rather than lose a person and ultimately a headcount.
A reluctance to move by some jobseekers prior to receiving their bonus means that there will be less competition for candidates in the market early this quarter.
The rise of contracting numbers in Singapore is still being seen. More candidates are open to a contracting role due to the insecurity they feel in their current role in light of market volatility.
With one or two banks relocating low cost roles offshore we have seen some retrenchments and as a result candidates are open to contract opportunities to simply get back into the workforce quickly.
Candidate trends
Cost cutting remains top of the agenda with most banks. As a result, salary increases for new hires remain flat. In extreme situations one or two banks have chosen to move permanent employees across to contract rather than lose headcount or retrench a person and lose the resource. Contracting roles where budget can be taken from capital expenditure (instead of operating) is being seen as a good way to counter the loss of new headcount.
