Banks in Australia continue to need senior IT professionals, but the lure of better compensation, lower tax and plentiful jobs means Singapore is becoming an attractive option for Aussie techies.
“Banks in Australia realise that they don’t operate in isolation from what’s happening in the broader APAC region. They know they face increased competition for the top finance technology talent from locations such as Singapore,” says Peter Noblet, regional director APAC, Hays.
Many major firms – including Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse and RBS – are expanding in the city state, whose status as a global IT hub continues to rise.
“There’s a trend of Australian candidates relocating to Singapore because a number of large investment banks have centralised operations there,” says Joel Hides, director, financial services, technology Greythorn. This is reducing the Australian talent pool, which is already small.
The IT employment market is becoming more international and candidates are more willing to relocate to where banks are expanding. This means Australia increasingly risks missing out on talent to Singapore, which offers not only a wider range of career choices, but potentially better pay. Hides says while some candidates want to work in Australia for lifestyle reasons, “it’s hard to compete with the dollars on offer in Singapore”.
Australia needs techies too
Australia cannot afford to wave the white flag when in comes to attracting and retaining IT employees.
Although during the GFC many tech roles we relocated to Asia, these were mainly positions such as developers and testers, which require the kind of hard technical skills often found offshore at lower cost. By contrast, the roles which banks in Australia are recruiting for now are generally more skilled and demand an understanding of banking.
“There’s an increased demand locally for the client-facing skill sets such as business analysis, project management and applications support,” says Hides. Solutions architects and algorithmic trading systems developers are also sought after.
The candidates needed to fill these positions are precisely the sort of highly skilled IT professionals that banks in Australia don’t want to lose to other countries.
Hiring down under this year probably won’t be as strong as 2010, but it will be steady – driven by core systems upgrades, transformation programmes and financial-sector integration. HSBC’s expansion, and ANZ’s acquisition of ING are creating jobs, according to a headhunter, who asked not to be named.
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