Scottish financial services: What was hot, and what was not, in 2010?

After a torrid 2009, it shouldn't have been too hard for this year to offer some sort of improvement for Scotland's financial services industry. Redundancies have, unfortunately, continued - but at a slower pace. Employees in some sectors, however, have had a very good 2010.

2010 has been a good year for....

Glasgow

OK, the bulk of new financial roles being created in Glasgow this have been firmly rooted in the back office - whether that's IT, investment operations or call centres - and there's reason to give thanks to the government's Regional Selective Assistance programme, but the point is that jobs have been created.

Tesco Bank unveiled plans to hire 800 for its Glasgow call centre; Barclays Capital is eventually going to employ 600 in its 'shared services hub' in the city; outsourcing firm Vertex is hiring 368 for its Glasgow financial services 'centre of excellence'; even RBS has created 160 call centre roles (despite closing offices in Scotland's biggest city); while the likes of Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan have all been steadily recruiting.

Change managers

Eighteen months ago, the job title 'change manager' would have largely been met with slight bafflement by the majority in Scotland's financial services industry. This year, however, it's been the hot skill-set.

Both Lloyds Banking Group and RBS have been integrating new businesses and downsizing, while Tesco Bank has been working to kick-start a number of new functions throughout the year.

The result, is that there's been something of a battle to get change managers onboard, largely on a contract basis because of the finite nature of these roles, and daily rates of between 350-450 a day have been offered.

Wealth management

It's slightly strange that, despite the fact that wealth has largely remained static in Scotland, a raft of new players have been building their teams north of the border.

In reality, it's all about competition for assets. With the traditional mainstays of Scottish wealth management - Bank of Scotland and RBS-owned Adam & Co - floundering, smaller players have expanded to compete.

The result has been a great deal of poaching and subsequent replacement, as well as a need for some firms to modestly expand. It's been a good year to work in wealth management in Scotland.

And 2010 has been a bad year for...

Banking redundancies

By now, redundancies within Scotland's two biggest banks have become a sad fact of life. In total, 7,000 people in north of the border have been affected by redundancy at Lloyds and 1,500 employees have departed from RBS.

Due to their ongoing restructuring process, these have been announced in dribs and drabs.

Significant job cuts this year include 130 roles within Adam & Co's Edinburgh office due to implementing new technology in October; 390 IT jobs at Lloyds in October and the 440 roles gone after the closure of RBS's Glasgow-based Direct Line office.

The pace of redundancies has slowed, but it's unlikely that we've seen the back of them entirely.

The majority of people working in insurance

There has been a bit of a battle for actuarial talent in Scotland, with the big insurance firms getting in shape for the looming Solvency II regulation, but firms have largely been scaling back.

Aegon, which employed 2,400 people in Edinburgh, aims to cut 25% from its UK cost base; Standard Life chopped 600 from its headcount during the second stage of its restructuring programme, and (as we've mentioned previously) RBS made over 400 redundancies after the closure of its Glasgow Direct Line office.

Getting (or retaining) redundancy payments

The one upside from all these redundancies in Scotland's banking sector is that, by and large, financial services firms have been relatively generous when it comes to severance pay. Generally, this has worked out as a month's pay per year of service.

Unfortunately, it seems that there's a decent chance employers will look to sidestep these payments if they possibly can.

Firstly, there's the high-profile case of ex-RBS employee Kate Furlong, whose Facebook boasting about her redundancy pay was reported back the bank and rescinded.

More generally, though, according to lawyers, more and more ex-employees (particularly long-serving ones) are being spuriously dismissed in a bid to avoid the necessity of severance pay.