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| CURRENT SECTION :: Market Reports | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
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Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let’s all put our red braces on, change our surname to Gecko and repeat the mantra: “greed is good”. If I haven’t given you enough clues already, this week’s article is about IT contracts in the banking world. Having been there myself I can tell you it’s an interesting area to work in. And when I say “interesting” I mean it in the same way women sometimes describe their partner’s choice of clothes. Requirements in banking generally have been on the increase since at least September last year (when we started collecting stats) and postings have almost quadrupled over that time period. March had over 700 postings. Rates-wise things have improved a little with the hourly rate increasing from £38 in September to £44 now. Obviously, this is a massive generalisation and is just covering any contract posted that mentions the word “banking”. So let’s focus in a little. I’ll start with retail banking. This has tracked the general trend with the graph showing a nice upward slope. However the number of contracts posted has yet to reach treble figures. Because of the small number of contracts posted, the rates might be skewed a little (for example, the average rate in November last year was £95/hr! I wonder which lucky sod got that role?). Things have normalised, though, and the average rate is now just over £40/hr. Banking is frequently separated into three areas: front office, middle office and back office. Nobody’s quite sure what middle office people do but they seem to have become important over the last decade or so. Anyway, the graph for the changes in contract rates for the three areas looks like a biorhythm chart and at the moment, all three seem to be in conjunction at around the fifty quid/hr mark. What is peculiar is that while front office rates have remained relatively static, middle and back office rates were leaping up and down like Zebedee on speed, both hitting the heights of £70/hr at some point. Bear in mind that these are averaged rates and could therefore be for anything from a CEO to a runner. However, even looking at the low end of the market, rates are still around £45/hr. Having said that, middle office workers have only just reached double figures for demand in the last couple of months, and back office postings have halved in the last month. Even front-office postings have reduced slightly, although there were still over 120 postings last month. Don’t even think about looking for jobs where you mention forex or credit management. There have been pitifully few jobs posted looking for those skills. Fund management does a little better, although it peaked in January at 44 postings and has gone downhill from there. Risk Management is in a similar position although there’s been over double the amount of jobs posted compared to Fund Management. Fixed Income has been steadily climbing from 55 postings in September to 130 in March. But the real scorcher when it comes to demand is Derivatives which has soared from 55 postings in September to over 200 last month! What about rates, though? Well… Learn Black-Scholes (and there were 4 postings last month looking particularly for that skill) and you’ll be up for an average rate of over £50/hr if derivatives appears on your CV. Mind you, swaps experience will get you closer to £55. Fund Management and Risk Management experience will get you an average of £46/hr but – who’s your daddy? – if you’ve got good Fixed Income skills your average rate is going to be £58/hr. And if you’re really lucky, and get a good contract (and they’re out there) you could be looking at £68/hr, although that’s down from the beginning of the year when you could have got £74/hr! Swaps and Derivatives expertise aren’t far behind with £67 and £65 per hour, and Fund Management and Risk Management come in a little lower at around the £55/hr level. Just using the words “Banking” and “Credit” in your search criteria will certainly get you a nice rate, although strangely it peaked in December (maybe due to posting jobs after too many Christmas lunches) at £63/hr and now stands at £46. However, there were fewer than 40 jobs posted last month and that’s the highest it’s been all year. Banking and risk will also get you a tasty rate, although a couple of quid lower than banking and credit. Demand is about the same, however. If you happen to have a speciality in credit cards you’ll have seen the market rise at the beginning of the year and start to dip a little now. Overall there’ve been fewer than 20 contracts posted per month and rates-wise, after a high last October of £56/hr, it’s now down to around £40. But I know what all you contractors really want – that smug feeling when you look at what permies earn. So let’s see what the average salary for someone in IT with banking experience could expect… Don’t forget, however, that these salaries don’t include the various benefits such as health insurance, bonuses, interest-free season ticket loans etc that come with a permanent role. Also, you don’t get called scum-sucking pond life by all the other permies. Okay – for generic banking experience, the average salary has hovered around the £50k mark for the last 6 months. It’s currently around £53k. For more definitive roles, fixed income experience has seen the biggest climb, from £55,000 in September to £70,000 now. FOREX has had a bit of a troubled time with average salaries down to £30,000 in February, although it’s picked up a bit since. Experience in currencies will give you and average salary of £67k and it’s stayed that way for most of the time. Swaps have probably been the most volatile, salary-wise, with figures circa £100k around the end of last year, although they’ve slowly receded to about £55k now. Derivatives experience is always popular and you could expect to get an average of £70k now. Don’t forget that these figures are averages. If you’ve just got into the financial world you should expect to be paid a lot less. On the other hand, if you’ve got years of experience, the figure could be considerably higher. On the demand side, permanent jobs are coming in thick and fast. After a very slack period last year, things have picked up enormously. For example, last month there were over 1,300 job posted for people with fixed income experience, up from 400 six months ago. Derivatives requirements have done even better with over 1,700 jobs posted in March! FOREX and currency jobs have increased too, although they are in low double figures, and swaps has seen a five-fold increase in demand and is now around 200 postings a month. Banking jobs generally have done really well, with over 2,500 jobs posted last month. So there we go. If you put braces in your search criteria you would have found 5 permanent jobs last month. I don’t think it’s necessary for them to be red either. Next week’s article will be more generic and give an overview of the market generally. It’ll also have something about thin clients and Citrix, which sounds like the latest alcopop. And I’ll probably mention sex too, seeing as I haven’t done it for a few weeks. And now it’s time for the plug. It’s a bit like that point in the Richard and Judy show where you can see the special guest is bored to death with answering inane questions and just wants to show his or her new book to the camera so that they can get off-screen and go to the free bar. Okay – if you’re looking for a job, try www.webalertz.com for job notification from major jobsites within 5 minutes of posting. Alternatively, if you don’t have broadband or other always-on connection, try www.servalertz.com. Both are low-fat, rich in vitamins and minerals and GM-Free! By the way – re: the reference above to sex and not having done it for a few weeks. I was referring to not having referred to it in CUK articles recently. Not that I hadn’t done it recently. Which I have. Honestly. You know – IT. No – not I.T. – IT. I hope that makes it perfectly clear. Thank you. Alan.potter@webalertz.com www.webalertz.com Apr 8, 2004 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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