The announcement towards the end of last year that the Chancellor has accepted the Vickers Report recommendations didn’t come as much of a shock but what’s interesting is the fact that changes to the banking system may well create a raft of job opportunities within the financial service IT sector.

The recommendations include the separation of retail and investment banking arms to ensure stability – basically ensuring that the banking needs of smaller customers and consumers are handled by ring fenced parts of the bank . But from a systems perspective, this is a huge  undertaking – it will require significant IT and operational investments which in turn is likely to create a raft of IT jobs as the banks strive to bring about a complex technology separation. However, we’re likely to be looking at a period of around four years before the boom happens as in reality, we will have to wait and see what timeline the banks will be willing to commit to.

The legislation will not be fully drafted until 2015 with implementation by 2019 and obviously there will be an extended planning period of analysis and design before the real implementation begins.  Much could happen politically, economically and financially during this period but if the work does happen then the projects would be gigantic and will require huge amounts of human resource.

Laurie Boyall is Managing Director of McGregor Boyall the  financial services recruitment specialist for *Change &Transformation*Compliance*Executive Recruitment*IT*Marketing*Product Control &Valuations*Risk

The compliance recruitment market is an area that is continuing to experience growth – largely due to increased regulation from both the EU and UK.  This has resulted in whole teams being created covering both advisory and implementation roles.  And whilst this may have been a prevalent theme over the last eighteen months, there shows no sign of let up for the foreseeable future.  However – it’s not just technical know-how that’s in demand. 

Today’s compliance professionals need to be front office facing and have the diplomacy and rigour to be able to stand up to the trading floor. Sales and Trading teams do not like regulation – they see it as a hindrance to executing business and the challenge for compliance professionals is making it easy for the front office to do their job. They have to be assertive, direct and solutions driven.

Additionally, many of the roles call for product specific knowledge and with demand outstripping supply this has presented opportunities for contract staff with the right product knowledge.  While banks are obviously having to be cost conscious in the current climate, the compliance function is absolutely business critical and so those with relevant experience can continue to justify their rate and their position.

To this end, we are seeing an upward pressure on salaries and daily rates within compliance – a head of compliance, for example, can command rates in excess of £500 a day – and this trend looks set to continue for the foreseeable future.

There is no doubt that the logical consequences of the raft of regulations that have been implemented in the last few years ,is that people who understand and can implement any necessary changes are in high demand. In fact, despite the current gloomy headlines about the job market many of these professionals have taken advantage of this situation to move into lucrative contract roles both to accelerate their career progression and increase their knowledge base.

Robert McLeod

Robert is Financial Services Director at Venn Group, the specialist provider of temporary and interim staff across the UK. Robert has over twelve years’ experience of managing recruitment teams within the financial services sector.