The recent Vickers report calling for the ring fencing of high street banking operations from their investment banking arms may have fallen short of the full separation that Vince Cable was calling for but could still cause hiring headaches in the years ahead.

The skill sets required will be very different for any potential separate departments.  While from an investment banking perspective, compliance professionals have had to be front office facing in a business partner capacity, the banks would also need a more audit and control approach to deal with the financial segregation aspects.

So even though the ring fence is not as tight as had been feared an element of rebalancing will be required if compliance functions are to cover both investment and retail operations.  Those compliance professionals who have been hired specifically for an investment bank may not have all the correct skills for the retail banking side as typically, compliance officers specialise in investment or retail specific compliance rules and products.

The upshot is that against a backdrop of ever evolving regulatory change (Dodd-Frank, MiFID 2, RDR, change of regulators etc), it’s a rather challenging time.  There’s a fairly broad skill set required at present – it’s a far more strategic role than the old box ticking image and the real need is going to be for those who can offer regulatory interpretation. Consequently, candidates will need to be objective and flexible in their approach and job search, in this ever-changing market and employers are going to have to define what they need with the utmost care.

Michelle Myers is Head of Compliance at Twenty Recruitment

It’s been a busy year for CityJobs.com, with a re-designed site and new products and services. Over the coming 2 weeks we’re ramping up our marketing efforts in order to reach as many new Banking and Finance Job-Seekers as we can. As well as our usual Search Engine Marketing campaigns we are running print ads in The Evening Standard, The Metro and CityAM. These adverts feature SMS short-codes to allow Job-Seekers to quickly access our mobile site. Every candidate that registers with the site will enter a draw to win an iPad2.

In order to enhance our service even further we have recently launched a CityJobs App, which hit the App store last Friday. The App is completely free and will download in a matter of seconds. It allows you to search the mobile site through an even simpler interface – directly accessibly from your phone. It is the latest attempt by us to ensure you can access CityJobs.com whenever – and from wherever – you want.

Stay tuned for more developments over the coming months.

While there may still be doom and gloom around the state of the economy, from a hiring perspective, the ever evolving regulatory environment in the City is driving unprecedented demand for IT and business change professionals.

We’re supporting a number of existing large business change and IT transformation programmes– all of which are being driven by the evolving regulatory environment.  And going forward, we expect these programmes  to get larger and more complex in scope. The Solvency 11 regime due to be introduced by  2013 will bring about a fundamental change to the solvency and risk management standards for the European insurance industry, and we also have  changes to the regulatory supervisory structure of the insurance industry due  by the end of 2012.

All these programmes need  interim and contract resources – and that’s driving demand for project directors, programme managers, project managers, business analysts and architects – particularly those who have had previous experience of  the implementation of large  regulatory change projects.

However, from an employer’ point of view, resources are pretty thin on the ground. We are finding that on many occasions demand is exceeding supply which is putting an upward pressure on rates – great news for contractors with the right experience!

Paul Byrne has over twenty years’ experience  within the IT recruitment sector and heads up a team at specialist financial services recruiter McGregor Boyall, which focuses on mid to senior level interim and contract IT and business change role within the insurance secto. To see the jobs that McGregor Boyall are recruiting for pleasse click here.