Jobs emerging in post trade servicing

The issue of financial services firms building more robust technology systems to deal with increasing post-trade services burdens is one that has been thrust to the fore of late, and jobs opportunities are beginning to emerge.

"Beyond the crisis fire-fighting of the past two years, there are still opportunities to squeeze out costs. Post-trade processing is one area ripe for examination given ongoing cost pressures and regulatory scrutiny," says Cubillas Ding, senior analyst in Celent's securities and investments practice.

One such regulatory requirement comes from the European Commission around the clearing and settlement of the OTC derivatives, which believes that financial markets should invest more in post-trade automation and standardised data management systems. There's also the more complex post-trade landscape in the wake of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).

James Richmond, sales director at financial IT recruiters Cititec, says: "A number of firms we work with are investing a lot of money and man hours into developing new securities processing systems with a view to cut-costs in the long-term. Currently, though, the main hiring activity is at the functional level - programme managers, business analysts and project managers."

He adds that firms are looking to recruit on both a permanent and contract basis, but the relatively buoyant demand has yet to have an upward affect on pay. Instead, IT contractors are drawn by the prospect of a comparatively long-term project - between six to 12 months - rather than the three-month placements which are currently commonplace.

In a recent article on the tech race between trading facilities in Financial News, Charlotte Crosswell, chief executive of Nasdaq OMX Europe, said: "Given all the other things that are going on in Europe, latency is not the burning issue. The main challenge now is sorting out the post-trade space rather than shaving 50 microseconds off your latency."