Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Asia banks seeking tech hires over 'rock-star' bankers this year

HONG KONG — Financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region will be more inclined to hire technology specialists this year than investment bankers as they enhance product offerings and upgrade their systems, according to a survey by Options Group.

People walk past office buildings at the central business district in Singapore April 14, 2015. Reuters file photo

People walk past office buildings at the central business district in Singapore April 14, 2015. Reuters file photo

HONG KONG — Financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region will be more inclined to hire technology specialists this year than investment bankers as they enhance product offerings and upgrade their systems, according to a survey by Options Group.

Among regional financial-services managers, 40 per cent say they expect to increase their headcount for information technology-related roles this year, according to a September-October survey conducted by the New York-based recruiter. By comparison, only 18 per cent of the 380 managers surveyed intended to add jobs in investment banking, while 29 per cent may do so in fixed income and equities sales and trading.

“The face of banking is changing,” Mr Russell Kopp, a partner at Options Group in Hong Kong, said by phone earlier this month. “We’re at a juncture where increasingly it’ll be about technology, automation and big data rather than about the rock-star investment bankers.”

In a bid to cut costs and improve returns, global and regional banks such as HSBC Holdings, Standard Chartered and DBS Group Holdings are increasingly using new technologies to offer more digital-banking services and upgrade their regulatory and compliance systems. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Group and Barclays were among banks that cut investment-banking jobs in Asia last year amid a slump in deals.

“The reality is the future of where the highly paid people will be is not going to be your salesperson, it’s not going to be your bankers,” Mr Kopp said. “It’s going to be your tech people, it’s going to be quantitative professionals that can meaningfully develop or enhance top-line revenues.”

The responses in the Options Group survey covered financial-services managers at vice-president level and higher who work for banks, broker dealers and boutique firms in the Asia-Pacific region. BLOOMBERG

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.