Investment banks - now hiring IT workers

Investment banks are creating more than half of the IT jobs in the financial services industry, research has found.

Where insurance companies and high street banks create 18 per cent and 16 per cent of jobs, respectively, investment banks have a 57 per cent share in the financial services job market, according to a survey by IT recruitment company ReThink.

Jon Butterfield, director of ReThink Recruitment, said this is because investment banks are required to build their own IT infrastructure for trading platforms whereas retail banks have outsourced a proportion of IT work overseas.

He said in a statement: "Investment banks develop a lot of their own IT architecture, which creates significant demand for IT skills in-house but high street banks tend to use 'off-the-shelf' systems.

"Online banking created a big demand for IT skills from high street banks but five years on the use of technology as a competitive tool in the retail banking sector seems to have tailed off."

He added that new entrants to the retail banking market are beginning to cause a rise in demand for IT labour as they use new technologies.

Butterfield said: "Spending on IT security is being ramped up and over the next few years development of new ATM services and banking by mobile phone should see demand for IT staff in the high street banking sector climb."

The research, which was taken from a snapshot of 2,093 new job adverts, found that while offshoring depleted low-level IT functions in high street banks, the demand for people with technical and business skills has rocketed.

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