LOB Salary Guide RISK v5 SPREADS - Flipbook - Side 5
05
Permanent recruitment trends
Over the last two years, demand for risk
managers has been higher than at any
point since before the Global Financial Crisis.
While hiring activity remained buoyant across
the board in 2022, demand was especially
strong at the junior end of the market.
Hiring ramped up quickly in 2021 when the
uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 began to
dissipate. Banks were especially active, as they
reinvested the large sums they had set aside
for provisioning during the pandemic once it
became clear that their losses were lower than
expected.
Graduates with one or two years’ experience
are highly sought-after, with many employers
seeking professionals who can hit the ground
running without requiring extensive training.
Finding and attracting talented risk managers is
never easy, but we initially saw a steady stream
of candidates keen to explore new opportunities
in 2021 after 18 months of relative inertia. And
although many of these professionals had
found jobs by 2022, underlying demand has
showed no signs of slowing down.
Against this backdrop, employers of risk
managers have reported major difficulties in
sourcing skilled candidates. Nearly all (95%)
of the organisations we recently polled are
struggling to hire suitable staff. Of these, 61%
described current recruitment conditions as
‘very challenging’, a significant rise from 37%
the previous year.
Salary expectations continue to be the
biggest barrier to hiring, with 82% of employers
emphasising the challenges they have faced
around compensation. Other key issues include
candidates possessing insufficient technical or
regulatory knowledge (62%) and dissatisfaction
with remote working opportunities (38%).
These candidates are in short supply,
particularly for more technical roles, as the
STEM talent pool is already shallow and skilled
graduates are often courted by multiple
employers from different industries.
Talent shortages have also been exacerbated
across all levels of seniority due to the perfect
storm of Brexit and Covid-19. At the height
of the pandemic, many foreign nationals
– students, recent graduates and more
experienced professionals – went back to
their home countries and never returned.
There is a huge
amount of hiring at
the moment. It's certainly
the busiest I've seen
the market in 15 years.
— Josh Lawson, Associate Director
of UK Risk & Treasury at Barclay Simpson
