IT integration specialists' work is not done
Last year's merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch created expectations of recruitment around the integration of disparate IT systems . Are there still jobs in this space?
BofA and Merrill have now combined their electronic trading teams, and the new services and products are being promoted through the entity, Michael Lynch, managing director and head of Americas electronic trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told Advanced Trading.
Ruth Colagiuri, head of electronic products at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, added:
"The technology teams started working together back in the fourth quarter of 2008 and as soon as we were able to have our quant groups start sharing information after the deal closed we began that as well."
In spite of this, recruiters are adamant that integration work still offers ample job opportunities for financial technologists (there's still Lloyds-HBOS and Lehman-Nomura/BarCap after all).
James Richmond, sales director at financial IT recruiters Cititec says: "There's a need for business analysts, project managers and developers for extra design and analysis around rolling out a single system across two organisations. Then you need people for decommissioning a wide range of third-party applications, and if you're knitting systems together, there's also a requirement for enterprise application integration specialists. Banks want a mix of these people."
There's also the fact that the whole process goes through various phases, which means it can take a surprising period of time.
"A lot of these projects go on for three years plus," says Simon Walker, director at Project Partners. "People are still working on the RBS-ABN Amro integration, for instance, and there's even the requirement to take on some new people for this."
He points to the fact that banks bring in test managers and testers are needed at the latter stages of an integration project to ensure the new system is up to scratch, which can provide a final rush of contract recruitment.
