Singapore’s three local banks – DBS, OCBC and UOB – may not being adding headcount as aggressively as last year, but they still have a combined total of almost 400 open vacancies.
But which type of jobs are they recruiting for right now?
To find out, we examined their careers websites and categorised their roles into 13 broad functions. These job sectors are shown in the table below as a percentage of total vacancies at each firm.
Close to a quarter (24%) of available positions across the three banks are in technology and digital banking.
Singapore banks are investing heavily in new mobile platforms for customers – such as UOB’s Mighty e-wallet app – and internal systems for client-facing staff, especially in consumer banking and wealth management. This is triggering recruitment of project-management, design and other digital-banking professionals.
Technology vacancies for developers, engineers and architects have also increased over the past two years, say IT recruiters in Singapore. Both DBS and OCBC are moving more development roles in-house instead of using technology vendors.
DBS currently has a “huge pipeline of digital transformation projects” and needs to hire 200 people, mainly developers and architects, over the next year to meet its technology objectives, Soh Siew Choo, head of core systems technology, told us recently.
At 17% of total roles at the three firms, operations is the next largest sector. Singapore-headquartered banks are not offshoring back-office roles away from the Republic to the same extent as their global rivals are.
While risk jobs remain in demand, compliance only accounts for 4% of openings as the recruitment boom in the function draws to a close. Singapore banks have largely reached their desired headcounts in compliance and are now mainly hiring to replace staff who leave.
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