GUEST COMMENT: Scotland's banking sector needs an image make-over

After what appeared to be the economic collapse of Scotland's banking and financial services sector in 2008, there are signs of a renaissance.

Following two dark years of decline which were a huge blow not only to the sector but also to Scotland's national pride, there are some reasons to be cheerful for those who continue to operate within the financial services industry.

There is once again talk of firms moving jobs north of the border and companies are beginning to increase investment in Scotland. Barclays Capital has recently created new jobs in their Glasgow operation and Tesco Bank has been growing its business at an alarming rate with many of the new jobs being created within their Scottish-based operations.

As a client ours, we have witnessed Tesco Bank's growth first hand and have had to respond to the challenge of meeting a high demand for skilled and experienced people in a very short time frame.

Tesco's case highlights a real challenge facing Scotland's financial services firms: the increasingly difficult task of finding, developing and retaining sufficient supplies of skilled workers within the sector.

Before 2008, the Scottish financial services industry had grown exponentially, which encouraged an influx of talent north of the border. Some of the best local people gravitated towards financial services and a broad range of international professionals, especially from Antipodean nations.

But since the dramatic turn of fortunes since that time, particularly in the Scottish banking industry, there's been a significant brain drain within the sector. Talent has either left Scotland to ply their trade elsewhere or, in some cases, jumped from financial services industry altogether.

We need to address this now.

All is not yet rosy in the garden - recent announcements of redundancies at Aegon and Standard Life Bank show there's still a degree of volatility in the sector, but the overall picture is much improved from where we were two years ago.

What we need now is a PR offensive to ensure that this positive message about recovery gets out to the domestic and international marketplace so Scotland can again manage to attract and develop the best experienced candidates towards its financial services sector.

We need organisations such as Scottish Financial Enterprise to turn up the volume and take a full-on, proactive role in promoting a message to the wider world that the sector is on the way back.

The other main business groups - IoD, CBI, Chambers of Commerce - must also push this message wherever possible. The Scottish political classes have a big role to play as well, both in speaking positively about the banking sector and, more importantly, avoiding point scoring by talking it down.

Only by having access to the best skills and expertise is vital to restoring this industry, which is integral to Scotland's long term economic success.

Mike Leeman is financial services manager at Edinburgh-based recruitment firm Bright Purple Resourcing