Hiring, salaries in financial services sector expected to rise
Hiring is expected to increase at least 20%; professionals in niche roles will command higher salary increases: report
Mumbai: Hiring and salaries in the financial services sector, especially in niche roles, are expected to rise during the year, according to a salary and employment forecast for 2014-15 by recruitment firm Michael Page India.
Hiring is expected to increase at least 20%, the report said, adding 79% of financial services firms surveyed expect to increase hiring in the next 12 months as they strengthen their analytics and reporting teams.
“The availability of talented and qualified statisticians and analytics professionals (often at a PhD level) at a relatively lower cost than overseas markets is driving greater demand for Big Data and Machine Learning roles in these firms."
Big data refers to massive amounts of information captured by IT systems that are too big and complex to be analysed and processed using conventional software. Using analytics, companies attempt to get insights into customer behaviour and also, in certain cases, solve business problems.
Big data helps financial services firms with customer profiling and profitability, fraud detection and management and also helps firms in using predictive models to cross-sell and upsell products by anticipating the needs of customers.
Professionals in these niche roles will command higher salary increases than the 10% average increase expected this year. Those with niche skills or in critical roles can expect a salary up to 25-35% higher in a new role, and an annual increase of up to 15% in the same role, says the report.
Besides analytics roles, key specialist areas positioned for an above-average salary increase include product control, treasury, regulatory reporting, and legal entity controllers in finance. Within risk, market and credit risk will be awarded the largest salary increases, says the report.
This comes at a time when international banks face increased pressure to lower their cost base, and India is increasingly being seen as an attractive location to house such value-add roles.
Other key areas where salary growth is strong include investment banking, private equity, real estate and management consulting, according to the report.
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