Hiring for bankers reaches three-year high
Recruitment for bankers has hit a three-year high according to new data despite the double whammy of the pandemic and Brexit.
Last month Britain’s top banks posted 1163 professional banking vacancies, according to research by Morgan McKinley and Vacancysoft, a 43.9 per cent rise on the same period last year.
Overall vacancies in the sector rose 19.4 per cent year-on-year, their highest point since July 2019.
“These bullish figures show there’s fight left in UK financial services yet. Banks are still bolstering their ranks despite warnings of a mass exodus of talent,” says Hakan Enver, Managing Director of Morgan McKinley.
In a sign of just how quickly banks have had to adapt, the data found that banks piled money into digital resources. Vacancies for IT developers and engineers rose 5.6 per cent year-on-year and infrastructure specialists, up 2.6 per cent.
“It’s unavoidable that the banking industry will face challenges because of Brexit. However, recruiters in financial services in London and around E&W are finding this an unexpectedly busy period.”
Banks took a real hit amid the pandemic and as the end of the Brexit transition neared. High street banks Lloyds Bank (-65 per cent), Barclays (-43 per cent) and NatWest (-33.1 per cent) all experienced year-on-year drops in recruitment.
By contrast JPMMorgan (+51%) and Citi (+85.7%), however, appeared unfazed — and also emerged fastest out of the blocks in the first two months of 2021, posting 442 and 333 professional vacancies, respectively.