Technologists: Are you missing a trick by not moving into FICC?

While much of the focus in recent years has been on the technological challenges facing the equities market, are IT professionals missing a trick if they're not turning their attention to the fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) sector?

Maybe so.

The recent report on investment banking by Morgan Stanley and Oliver Wyman spoke about the 'electronification' of the FICC market, a new study from BarCap has found that the proportion of banks trading more than half of their fixed income volume electronically has nearly doubled in the last two years, and now Goldman Sachs has highlighted the trend.

Speaking during the bank's Q1 results conference call, CFO David Viniar, said: "We think it's pretty clear that some of the technological advances that happened in equities are going to happen in some of the FICC businesses. The technology and client connectivity are going to be very, very important."

Currently, though, IT recruitment in the FICC sector is active, but not astronomical. Recruiters suggest that BarCap has been taking on people for a new rates platform, BNP Paribas is hiring for an FX options system and that HSBC and Nomura have been selectively hiring.

"FX is still a very active area, with many banks building FX options platforms, and also interest rates swaps trading systems," says Ben Cowan, associate director at recruiters Astbury Marsden. "But most recruitment is incredibly selective and banks are setting the bar very high."

From a purely technical skills perspective, most platforms in the fixed income sector are build around C# and Java, which are obviously in relatively plentiful supply.

However, banks are still struggling to recruit technologists.

"In the equities space, the focus was on liquidity, volumes, latency and connectivity, with product knowledge often taking a back seat," says Andrew Keene, director of IT in finance recruiters Thomson Keene. "In fixed income, the products are more complex and an understanding of the business area, coupled with technical skills, is more important."