Trends in the Compliance Market

​The Compliance market in 2015 is characterised by a massive increase in demand for Compliance personnel across both the buy-side and sell-side sectors.

This expansion of existing Compliance teams is a direct response to the surge of new rules and regulations coming from the FCA and the PRA. The increasingly regulated environment within financial services is forcing regulated firms to respond to this challenge.

The hot spot areas of activity are as follows:

Compliance Trainers. Until very recently the demand for Compliance training professionals was very low and many firms had either one or no Compliance education or learning teams. However, the sheer amount of new regulations has led many of the larger firms to start build Compliance Education & Learning teams. Focusing on both face-to-face and e-learning, Compliance training professionals provide training to both Compliance professionals and other firm members. In fact, many global investment banks are currently in the process of rolling out strategic global training and development programmes.

Product Advisory. The demand for Compliance advisory specialists continues swiftly with an increasing demand for candidates who can work on the trading floor. Products in demand include equities (both cash and derivatives), FX, liquidity, credit and fixed income. As demand is considerably higher than direct applicants, more and more firms are taking a lateral approach to hiring in this space with surveillance and Control Room candidates now being considered.

Surveillance. As a direct consequence of new trading rules, many firms are currently in the process of beefing up their monitoring and surveillance teams. Roles in this area include thematic reviews, trade surveillance, product monitoring and controls testing. Once again, in order to meet demand, other Compliance candidates with the ability to cross-train or migrate their skills over to this area are being considered.

Fraud. The demand for fraud experts, particularly those with investigations experience, is steadily increasing as the need for experts on both internal and external fraud experts continues to grow.

The Compliance market will most probably remain active for the foreseeable future as firms continue to meet the challenge of the increasingly regulated market in which they operate. This means bigger budgets for Compliance, more direct hires, increased internal mobility and cross-training of other staff.