Recruitment News

Financial Services Comment

Financial Services recruitment has experienced a positive start to the New Year, with Exchange Street Financial Services registering as many new IFA jobs, admin jobs and paraplanning jobs this year as in the final three months of 2009. True, January has traditionally been a busy month in the job market with more vacancies registered at this point than any other, but the variety of roles on offer does hopefully point to a brighter picture for 2010.

Of those new positions registered there has been a rough split between technical support roles (e.g. paraplanning jobs, compliance roles, admin jobs etc) and consultancy positions. The latter have been made up of traditional IFA jobs but there has also an upturn in business development manager positions.

This second area has been helped by the moves of asset management companies to increase IFA referrals to their discretionary portfolio management services by seeking BDMs with the relevant contacts and knowledge of investment planning. Such moves are bound together with the changing face of the financial services industry, with regulatory pressures and the impending Retail Distribution Review forcing IFAs to re-think their investment proposition.

As ever it is such slight nuances that can be the drivers for one area of the market experiencing growth and therefore requiring ongoing recruitment. Whilst IFA jobs should become more prevalent over the course of the year it could well be the business development market that sees the greatest growth in relative terms of all of the sectors.

However it does face competition on this front from technical support vacancies, with paraplanning jobs and admin jobs being registered at a level not seen for a while. It will be interesting to note how this market develops as recruiting back office staff could be the precursor for the upturn in IFA jobs that we have all been waiting for.

Exchange Street remains on hand to guide our candidates through the changing world of financial services recruitment and provide the specialist advice that can add great value to any individuals’ search for a new role.

• More News Articles