eFinancialCareers

Demand for techies is high, despite the trend to off-shore some roles.

Banks use computers for just about everything – from communicating with staff and storing information on clients to running complex computer models to price financial products. They are known for having some of the world’s cutting-edge computer systems, especially for the trading floor, where financial products and commodities are bought and sold electronically.

Trends

Investment banks’ IT spending is a big, but erratic, business. Banks spend millions on IT when they have to, but since IT is a cost, any money spent on new IT systems will, in the short-term at least, have a negative impact on a bank’s balance sheet.

The good news for Australian graduates right now is that while IT spending is sluggish in Europe, it’s a growth area in Australia. Australia tends to be an early adopter of technology, and banks and financial institutions are looking at smart ways to be more efficient, and to drive productivity.

That means that despite the trend towards outsourcing banking IT jobs to low cost countries like China and India, the overall number of financial IT jobs in Australia is growing. It’s the commoditised, back-office roles that have been moved offshore, while more money is being poured into client-interfacing, business-interfacing technology and specialist, mission-critical technology, such as enhanced security systems. If you have IT and security skills, you’ll be in hot demand.

Roles and career paths

Jobs in IT departments of investment banks tend to fall into one of four categories: development, business analysis, project management and technical support. If you become an IT developer, you could be responsible for writing the programmes that help the bank do everything from pricing and booking trades to calculating risk. The programming languages used by banks are usually C++, Java and Microsoft’s .NET.

While developers write the programmes, business analysts look at the way technology is used in the bank and analyse the opportunities for making it work better.
Business analysts help identify the potential for making changes to a bank’s technology systems.

Once big changes are underway, the responsibility for managing them often passes to other staff: the project managers, who plan, structure and fulfill IT projects. If IT development work is outsourced to third-party providers, project managers liaise with providers to ensure the work is completed correctly and within the right time frame.

Technical support staff, meanwhile, require good technical skills and the thickest skin to handle not only the technology problems, but the temper tantrums of irate traders. It’s a role that carries a lot of responsibility – a computer problem on a trading floor lasting a few minutes could cost millions of dollars. It’s up to technical support staff to identify and resolve the glitch as soon as possible. IT staff in investment banks also usually specialise in the IT requirements of a particular business area.

While many IT staff work on the trading floor, others are based in private banking, fund management and operations, or deal with core infrastructure requirements.

The most significant career path and highest paid roles are those in which people have developed an understanding of the interface between IT and financial business – beyond being just a technician. These roles involve examining the functionality of what people are doing, developing or serving architectures to help traders or insurers or risk analysts to make better decisions, more quickly. IT business developers and project managers are also in extremely high demand. The major regions in Australia with higher than average IT salary increases and demand are Western Australia and Queensland due to the current resources boom, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), as the government invests more on infrastructure.

A basic understanding of programming skills is required for most IT financial roles, and graduates of combined business and IT degrees, who have a broad base of both IT and commercial knowledge, are most attractive to employers. There are also many graduate programs offered in-house, particularly at larger institutions, where it’s possible to learn both a broad range of skills and to specialise on base knowledge.

The banking and finance sector is the primary graduate opportunity for those wanted a career in IT, says Cyrus D’Cruz, executive general manager for IT practice for Hudson Australia: “Banks in particular, and certainly many of the larger financial institutions, insurers, retail banks, invest quite heavily in their recruitment programs for graduates and have very highly-developed and industry recognised programs,” he says.

Pay

At the graduate level, salaries begin at around AU$40K, but at more senior levels, the industry is beginning to see a return to the kind of money paid in IT in the early years. Particularly in key development roles, bonus structures and performance-related pay are on the rise. IT program directors command significant salaries, and in the consulting space salaries are well into the seven figures. The average salary for an executive IT role is around AU$100K.

Skills

• D’Cruz at Hudson Australia, says that skill sets vary for different roles: “Graduates are typically going into programs where they work across the board to learn a range of skills and then specialise,” he says. “As well as programming skills and problem-solving and analytical skills, customer service skills are also considered important in IT roles these days. Even for the back office guys crunching code, we still look for people that can interface with other people well, strong empathy skills and emotional intelligence,” says D’Cruz.

• Kevin Jarvis from Robert Half International agrees that communication skills are equally as important as the technical know-how. “Candidates need documentation skills, and verbal and written skills. Often at the higher end of development you need to be able to liaise with all levels as well – from the programmers to the clients.”

• Paul Lyon, Group Managing Director from specialist recruitment firm Ambition, says: “Many businesses are seeking candidates who have both business skills and traditional IT skills. There is a big demand for developers, and business analysts in this field, and it’s a candidate’s market if you can effectively market yourself.”