Sorrowful Singapore support staff on US$168k accuse banks of blindly chasing profit
Singapore’s financial services professionals are quite downtrodden. They work longer hours than their rivals, and they do it for less pay. They’re also expecting some of the highest bonus increases in the world this year. But don’t let the idea of impoverished, miserable Singaporean bankers enter your imagination – not the impoverished part, at least.
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A new report on risk, compliance and audit professionals in Singapore was released this year by recruitment firm Eames Consulting. Based on a survey of more than 200 industry professionals, one of its most interesting discoveries is that Singapore’s middle-office professionals are very, very decently paid.
More than half of professionals working in risk, compliance and audit, made over SG$18k a month – SG$216k a year, or around US$168k. Just under a quarter of them made over SG$25k a month, equivalent to SG$300k or US$234k a year.
However, only around 38% of them thought they were paid “fairly". They saw a 11-15% salary increase as table stakes before they even considered changing jobs. Almost 70% of Singaporean saw their total compensation as the most important factor behind a job move.
Interestingly, three quarters of Singapore’s middle-office functionaries are worried about a financial crisis. 75% said they were concerned about the stability of the organizations they were considering a job move to.
The blamed this on short term profiteering. “Short term performance culture is/has resulted in an industry in retrograde mode,” one survey respondent said. A pursuit of “cheapest to deliver” locations meant an “an erosion of capability and human capital that will require decades to recover.” Ouch.
A distaste for outsourcing is not new in the industry. A US banking professional said last year that “the offshore-driven model is already undermining return… A corporate bank that once prided itself on global strength now feels like a hollow shell.”
Nonetheless, it’s all the rage in Singapore. Last April, Morgan McKinley’s country director for Singapore, Ken Ong, told us that support roles were being “very actively offshored,” with countries like Malaysia a popular destination. And of local bank DBS’ 115 job openings in its “People, Finance & Controls” department, which includes compliance and risk functions, 46 were in its home market of Singapore, while 22 were in offshoring centers such as India and Indonesia.
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