Allegations of expenses fraud and other reasons why you will now be let go without any redundancy pay

Whatever you are doing, ensure that that it cannot in any way be construed as manipulating your expenses.

Recruiters say people are coming to them who have been fired from banks for seemingly spurious reasons meaning their previous employers can avoid paying them off.

"Banks are looking for reasons to fire people," says the director of one recruitment firm. "We just met someone who had over-claimed on their expenses by 90 over a 10 month period. They're now waiting to see whether they're reported to the FSA, in which case their career will be finished.

"Over-claiming by marginal amounts is probably endemic in the financial services industry,"

he adds. "It's also a great excuse to get rid of people."

Last week, it emerged that Goldman Sachs had fired and fined the former executive assistant Kristen Jacques for using her corporate credit card to pay personal expenses between 2009 and 2010. Kristen had signed her boss's name on the expenses forms. Weirdly, however, she had also listed each expense as personal and included personal cheques with each expenses form to cover them.

In Kristen's case, there's no suggestion that Goldman concocted a reason to get rid of her and the forged manager's signature seems a sign of culpability, but as Forbes points out, Jacques submitted 13 expenses forms before it became an issue, suggesting - at least - that the bank has begun implementing more stringent checks.

A lawyer who specializes in representing employees who are bringing cases against banks (but not against Goldman Sachs) told us almost all his cases concern people who feel they've been let go unfairly. In many cases, he added, the reasons for firing people seem very tenuous.

"I've had insider trading, trading without authority, trading in breach of non-existent regulations that have been brought into effect after the incident that's being complained about, and situations in which a practice that has been followed in a department for a significant period of time suddenly becomes an offence without anyone being told about it," he says. ""A lot of banks seem to make it up as they go along," he adds. "It's all given me a very good lifestyle, a holiday home and paid for my children's education."

The upshot is that if you're doing anything at all which could be construed as inappropriate, even if everyone else is doing it, don't.

"It's like the MPs expenses scandal," adds the lawyer. "Padding expenses was accepted practice for a long time, until suddenly it wasn't."