Do all the best Scottish graduates go for financial services roles in London?
Is Scotland resting on its laurels when it comes to training and attracting graduates into the financial services industry? Maybe so.
More graduates from Scottish universities are being lured to lucrative roles in London, rather than sticking closer to home, and declining quality in educational standards is likely to hit the financial services industry north of the border hard over the coming decade.
In a wide-ranging report into the challenges facing Scotland's financial services industry in the next ten years, PricewaterhouseCoopers concedes that London will "continue to attract those qualified in Scottish universities" and that the country has been "resting on its reputation for high levels of education" in the face of declining performance.
A reliance on local graduates
This is a problem. For a start there's the fact that Scotland is aiming to double the number of people employed in the financial sector in the next ten years despite "dissatisfaction" among financial services firms about the skills on offer locally.
And, despite increasingly trying to position itself as an international financial services centre, practically speaking, Scottish companies tend to recruit from local universities. When companies have recruited across the UK in large numbers - for Morgan Stanley in Glasgow, for example - they've struggled to fill places.
"For our IT and operations graduate scheme, we recruit mostly from Scottish universities, and they are always plenty of good candidates," says Richard Barry, HR manager at Baillie Gifford. "Around a quarter of successful applicants for our investment graduate scheme come from Scottish universities, however."
Tell academia what skills you need
Still, PwC has called for greater links between academia and financial services companies to help develop future talent.
There are already some signs of this happening - the Scottish Financial Risk Academy, for instance, which links Herriot Watt and Edinburgh University with the likes of Lloyds Banking Group and Aberdeen Asset Management.
In volume areas of recruitment there's perhaps a need to target students earlier. Alan Thornburrow, chief executive of Scottish Investment Operations, concedes that not all roles in the sector require graduate talent, and more companies are recruiting from schools and further education colleges.
"More companies are recruiting in greater numbers in Scotland now, and in the last six months alone we've seen a dramatic increase in students showing interest in the industry," he says.
