If you’re thinking of starting a search for a new banking job in Hong Kong, it’s first worth considering whether your efforts will be worthwhile. If there are a lot of other people looking for work in your field now may not be a good time to enter the job market.
To help you decide, we compared the amount of Hong Kong-based vacancies with the number of local CVs on our database across 18 key finance job functions to produce the chart below. We restricted the resumes to those updated within the past year, indicating that they belong to people interested in finding new jobs.
If you’re in one of the sectors towards the top of the chart, your job search could be fairly straightforward because you will face the least competition from other candidates. If you’re at the bottom, you might want to stick with your current job.
Quants will have the ‘easiest’ time finding a new job in Hong Kong – there are just three Hong Kong-based candidates on our database for every available job in the city. Continued demand for analytical skills and a high academic barrier to entering the quant profession have created a perpetually tight job market.
Private banks in Hong Kong are also struggling to hire enough relationship managers to service the increasing number of millionaires and billionaires in Greater China. It’s not only the likes of UBS, Credit Suisse and Citi that are recruiting, boutiques such as LGT, VP Bank, EFG, and Safra Sarasin are regularly trying to poach RMs. Our chart shows that there are only four CVs for every private banking vacancy.
The job market is nearly as buoyant in risk management. While credit and market risk roles are still opening up in Hong Kong, there’s also emerging demand in conduct and operational risk. “New regulatory requirements around reporting, trade capturing and cyber security are creating a lot of new jobs in operational risk,” says Clara Shing, manager of financial services at recruiters Robert Walters in Hong Kong.
The numbers for capital markets (6) and M&A (9) are still comparatively strong. This suggests that more front-office staff have now found work, following senior jobs cuts by global investment banks in Hong Kong in 2016. Chinese banks have also been ramping up their hiring this year.
The bottom of our list shows the impact of recent redundancies in banking, which have reduced vacancies and increased the number of unemployed candidates. Commodities and FX – two sectors particularly affected by job losses at global banks – have high ratios of 15 and 16 respectively.
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