The financial risk management sector is booming right now – and it needs skilled umbrella company contractors and freelancers in a major way.
Insurance providers, retail banking establishments, and any of the other lovely financial institutions that are so adept at parting a fool from his money are keen to snap up any risk management contractors they can find, according to the findings of one specialist recruitment firm. MERJE says that since the Basel III and Solvency II regulations went into effect, financial institutions are practically falling over each other in their zeal for competent and qualified interim workers.
It’s these new regulations – which are of course incredibly complex and arcane for just about everyone without highly specific and specialised knowledge of economic and legal issues – that are the true driving force, according to MERJE’s director, Richard Abelson. Finding anyone who can suss out what these regulations mean, or how they’re likely to impact the financial services sector, is like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and Mr Abelson said the need for savvy risk managers was ‘significant.’
So how far has demand come up over the last year for contractors well versed in the Basel and Solvency regulations? Well MERJE says that it’s gone up by a startling 22 per cent; it’s obvious that financial service institutions are taking these regulations deadly seriously. It’s a pleasant change from the Wild West approach service providers took to the industry in the days leading up to the financial crisis, if you ask me!
The only possible spanner in the works for the industry is the fact that it may eventually exhaust the number of qualified contractors. The skills shortage that’s been gripping the UK has of course had an effect on the financial services industry as well, and since the risk management sector is so specialised and narrow in its focus it’s only natural that there would be more vacancies than there are freelance staff to fill them. There’s truly little that can be done about this too, considering how the only way to qualify for such a position is to have intimate knowledge of these regulations; unlike in other industries where you can train new graduates or apprentices up to suitable levels of knowledge, I don’t think it’s nearly as possible in this case.
