The specialist financial services recruitment company claimed the top three areas for financial services jobs in the year that were identified in BrightPool’s poll were compliance (34%), IT and business infrastructure (23%) and finance, including management information (16%).
Angela Hickmore, managing director at BrightPool, said: “It is salutary that compliance continues to be a growth area of work given how much resource financial services businesses have already invested in it.
"Deep rooted structural reforms to regulation are taking place across the financial services sector and contractors think that this is going to create more jobs than anything else in the sector in the year ahead.”
With new scandals like Libor still being uncovered there is still a lot of work that financial institutions need to do on their internal controls to make them watertight, claimed Hickmore.
"There’s also every possibility that the regulatory screw will be tightened further in response to the outcry over Libor,” she added.
Some 45% of financial services contractors surveyed by BrightPool said that tougher regulation of the sector would be the factor that led to the most new jobs compared to just 8% who said it would be expansion of the financial services sector.
Hickmore added: “Financial services businesses are forced to adapt to new regulatory changes so hiring of compliance staff is a necessity, not a choice. That’s not the case with parts of the business that handle growth, such as sales and marketing.
“Financial services businesses also have to make these improvements to their compliance culture during a recession meaning there is very little demand for staff to help them grow.”
