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Specialist IT Recruiters for Asia's Finance, Insurance and Commerce Markets

Analysis of the past year:

S.No Sector 2015 vs 2016 Comments
Permanent Contracting
1. Investment Banking Significantly less number of roles in 2016 Slightly more roles in 2016 Given there has not been much hiring in this sector this year, there may be more roles opening up in 2017 as businesses stabilize even though it looks like the golden years of 2006/2007 are behind us. Banks seem to continue to off-shore more roles to places like India and business lines are also getting trimmed. Incidentally, I have heard that the second largest global headcount for Citi and Goldman Sachs is now in India
2. Buy Side There were slightly more roles in 2016 but concentrated within a few firms Not many contract buy-side roles other than the odd infrastructure roles We had several roles with buy side firms in 2016. With banks getting more and more regulated, smaller hedge funds and market makers seem to be able to attract top talent such as High Frequency C++ developers
3. Insurance More roles in 2016 More roles in 2016 Insurance sector was booming in 2016, particularly, in the Digital space. InsureTech is another major development in the market (Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud and DevOps)
4. Commercial Banking No significant change No significant change Commercial banks have been adapting to new regulatory requirements. Cyber Security roles, IT Risk roles have been active. Also, increase in Big Data, and Mobile Banking roles have been active
5. Commerce  /  Retail More roles in 2016 in the Infrastructure / Cloud / Architecture / Mobile areas J2EE / Mobile development / ERP roles were the active contract roles Large enterprises in the Commerce space were focused on their e-commerce platform / mobile presence. Mobile / IoT / DevOps / Digital Development were in demand which also increased the demand for Security / Cloud roles
6. FinTech More number of roles FinTech firms seem to mainly hire permanent staff A big trend and will probably continue in 2017. We are seeing more senior level candidates from the sell side moving to start or join FinTech firms in the Cloud / IoT area

Our view of the market going forward:

  • To sum it up in one sentence, we think that the main hiring for 2017 in the finance space, is going to be among buy-side firms (market makers / hedge funds). We also see the Insurance sector / Commerce sector / Hi-Tech sector continuing to hire as they did in 2016
  • In terms of roles, we think Risk / Security / Cloud roles will be in particular demand followed by the usual development roles (C++/Java/J2EE)

Hope you found this information useful. Please do contact us should you need more information.

We look forward to helping you.

Best,
Vince Natteri,
Managing Director
(on behalf of the Pinpoint Asia Recruitment Team)
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