Employment trends in banking - Singapore market

The financial services industry has seen a resurgence in hiring activity as the Asian economic outlook has shown signs of improvement since September 2009. While this trend relates to all areas of financial services, there has been particularly strong jobs growth across the following business functions:

Risk management remains crucial
Post the global credit crunch, risk management has clearly become a critical function in the industry. This has driven banks to start thinking more about risk: whether it is market risk, credit risk or operational risk. Consequently, we have seen a surge in demand for people with expertise in these specific areas.

Singapore emerges as an operations hub
Singapore is fast emerging as an operations hub for the region with a number of international banks moving their operations and technology teams to the region over the last year. This has created to a strong demand for experienced staff within operations, especially those who have control or project management exposure.

Compliance and control remains important
While banking industry starts to grow again, there continues to be a strong emphasis on compliance, internal audit and control related functions. These positions are needed to help organisations stand up to closer scrutiny, as the industry looks to new performance indicators to assess an institution’s success.

There is stronger M&A activity in the region
With the increasing attractiveness of Asia as an investment destination, we have seen an increase in the hiring of corporate finance profiles as banks revalue their investment opportunities and actively look at potential investments in the region.

A boom in Product control
There are strong opportunities for qualified accountants within the product control function as banks are paying a lot more attention to the control mechanisms underpinning their activities.

Private banking is coming to the forefront
Already the world's second largest private-banking center, private banking in Singapore continues to grow, as tough secrecy laws and favorable taxes attract big accounts throughout Asia, hence creating opportunities across a number of areas in private banking.

Tulika Tripathi
Managing Director Singapore
Michael Page International
tulikatripathi@michaelpage.com.sg

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