Investment banks are placing more than 50% of all new
financial services IT job adverts, according to recruitment
consultancy ReThink Recruitment.
Retail banks' share of new IT job adverts was just 16%, against
the 57% share recorded by investment banks. Next to this, insurers
placed 18% of new adverts, fund managers 6%, and hedge funds
3%.
ReThink examined 2,093 financial services IT job adverts running
during the first week of March. It found that demand was greatest
for IT workers with experience of specialist straight-through
banking applications, such as Murex and Sophis.
In particular, banks need IT developers to automate and refine
trade processing between their front offices, where the trade is
made, and their back offices, where the trade is reconciled.
Both ABN Amro and HBOS were hiring Murex developers, while
Barclays Capital, HSBC, Nomura, Rabobank and Royal Bank of Canada
were hiring Sophis developers.
Rethink managing director Jon Butterfield said, "On some of the
niche banking applications, developers can command £800 to £1,000 a
day."
Stuart Taylor, director at financial services recruitment
consultancy McGregor Boyall, said, "The daily rate for a Java
developer in a good business area, such as derivatives, is £550 to
£600 a day."
Salaries being advertised were much higher than the £50 per hour
rate that the Association of Technology Staffing Companies said was
the average City rate last month.
Marcus Hawkins, director of ReThink's City practice, said, "I
think £50 per hour in the City is low and I think people would
chuckle about it. In application development, the rates are way
above that."
Almost all financial services IT jobs advertise daily rather
than hourly rates. The daily rates for Murex and Sophis developers
are the equivalent of £100 to £125 per hour. The daily rates for
Java developers are the equivalent of £69 to £75 per hour.
Demand for IT developers is being fuelled by the investment
banks' insistence that new employees have four or five years'
experience in their business areas.
Butterfield said, "Traders have not got the time or the
inclination to brief and educate the technologists. Anybody with
four or five years' experience in the City is a very valuable
person as there are just not enough candidates in the UK."
City institutions were prepared to increase IT developers' rates
to £1,000 a day or more because salaries at those levels still
represented a small fraction of the profits being made, Butterfield
said.
Recruitment consultants have found IT developers from outside
the UK to fill vacancies in the City.
New regulations, such as Basel 2 and the Markets in Financial
Instruments Directive (MiFID), are giving recruitment consultants
encouragement for the rest of 2006. While investment banks have yet
to hire IT developers for MiFID, they will have to invest in
systems before it comes into force in November 2007.
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