GUEST COMMENT: If you aspire to being a contractor, here's where you can earn more money than before
Contractors in financial services are still highly sought after. In several instances, we've seen the amount they're being paid rise quite substantially. Here's where the increases have been most dramatic:
1) Risk
Credit and market risk projects are the two areas where contract rates have risen the most. Business analysts and project managers have experienced uplifts, driven by the high number of large scale risk projects currently being undertaken by financial services firms. There's strong demand for people with specific product knowledge and we've seen some candidates receiving increases in their day rates of 100-150.
2) Product Control
There's been an increase in contracting rates across a number of areas of finance in the past 12 months. Changes to the Tier 1 (Highly Skilled Migrant) visa have compounded the problem, removing a pool of potential finance contractors.
As a result, product control rates have risen by around 100 a day. Newly-qualified (NQ) accountants with 2-3 years' experience have seen rates increase from 300-325 a day to 400 a day, and finance professionals with 4-5 years' post-qualified experience have seen their rates rise from 400 a day to 500+ a day over the past year.
3) Finance Change
Finance change specialists with a business-as-usual background in product control and P&L, plus experience of the full project life cycle, SME knowledge, and sophisticated stakeholder management skills, have seen their rates rise from 500 to 650 per day over the past 12 months.
This is a candidate-short area at the moment. Few candidates possess the full range of skills banks are looking for, whilst the pressure of FSA regulations has led banks to seek to significantly improve their processes from front to back.
In the past, banks recruited project managers to perform this role, only to realise that SME knowledge is essential to make the required changes happen successfully. The few candidates with these skills are aware of their worth in the market and can command higher rates.
