NEWS
Robert Walters Half Yearly Market Update: Financial Services Sector (Malaysia)
28 Jan 2011

Robert Walters releases its Half Yearly Financial Services Market Update (Malaysia) recently.

Market Overview for 2010
The volume of job opportunities increased tremendously as compared to 2009. Hiring activity hiked in January 2010, gained momentum throughout the year and showed little signs of a slowdown.

Employers made competitive offers to attract the best talent and this was most noticeable throughout the later half of the year. This was largely due to financial services organisations ramping up their hiring activity to secure quality headcount for 2011, where they envisage further growth of revenues. Those with an edge over their peers made a concerted effort to position themselves as employers of choice in terms of brand value, career progression opportunities, remuneration as well as working quickly to turn around the interview process so as to secure the best talent in the market.

Human Resources
The emphasis on human capital and top talent was a strong agenda for the government and private sector especially within the financial services sector. Hence, many companies undertook various initiatives to attract returning Malaysians who were based overseas.

Malaysia has been an attractive regional hub as a centre of excellence and for HR shared services as several large foreign banks have presence in Cyberjaya. Candidates with skills in performance management, HRIS, recruitment, HR business partnering and rewards were highly sought-after especially if they were willing to do shift work to support the global markets. In line with companies’ strategic goals, we witnessed an increasing focus on performance-based productivity merits over employee loyalty. This could consequently result in more financial institutions offering contract-based or fixed-term contract employment as opposed to long term, permanent jobs.

As the market became more competitive with new companies moving into Malaysia, there was a need for HR professionals to focus on helping organisations to attract and retain top-tier employees through both monetary and non-monetary efforts such as job enrichment, career planning and developmental programs.

The following are highlights:
Front Office: Areas that saw active hiring included transaction banking (mainly in sales but also in product), corporate banking (mainly senior relationship managers or credit analysts at mid level experience), corporate finance, M&A advisory, as well as debt capital markets (mid to senior level experience in structuring or syndication).

Governance: The governance sector saw the return of Shariah compliance advisory and Islamic finance hiring. Compliance processing also continued to be in high demand, particularly in the areas of Know Your Client (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) due to an increased focus on money laundering, errant financing and theft.

Risk Management: The demand for risk professionals remained strong across all key disciplines of credit, market and operational risk, with employers similarly displaying a preference for local talent. There was also a high demand for risk professionals with five to seven years’ experience within market and credit risk.

Operations: Due to an increase in sales and trading activities, we observed organisations requiring more headcounts to cope with the market volume, particularly within investment banking and treasury operations. Roles in demand ranged from mid to senior level professionals specialising in global markets and treasury operations.

Finance: Finance professionals continued to be in high demand throughout 2010 and this trend is likely to continue into 2011 particularly within the areas of accounting, business planning and analysis support.

IT: Candidates with global exposure, cross cultural outlook, overseas experience and a proven track record for large scale projects were highly sought after. Technical skills in high demand included SAP, Oracle, Java, .Net, C++, Unix, Siebel, Cisco and Windows Server. There was a strong demand for IT audit and security, project management, ITIL management, data warehousing, business intelligence and quality assurance professionals.

HR: Malaysia has been an attractive regional hub as a centre of excellence and for HR shared services as several large foreign banks have presence in Cyberjaya. Candidates with skills in performance management, HRIS, recruitment, HR business partnering and rewards were highly sought-after especially if they were willing to do shift work to support the global markets.

Sales & Marketing: We observed an increasing demand for candidates with online and digital marketing experience. The majority of other positions in high demand included web marketing specialists, senior product managers (to drive cards usage), acquisition and retention, as well as business development managers (to build a stronger presence via strategic partnerships and alliances).

Source : Robert Walters