As 'living wills' loom, banks are recruiting technologists on rates of up to 1,200 a day
Banks may be bemoaning the ongoing regulatory challenges they face, but IT professionals in the City have reason to be thankful. The latest problem large institutions are battling with are the technical issues related to writing a 'living will', and they're starting to bring in contractors to help them deal with them.
After proposing the idea for "recovery and resolution plans" for large institutions in the even of a crisis late last year, the Financial Stability Board has this week confirmed that banks should deliver these by an initial deadline of December 2012.
Despite this, as the FT has pointed out, the process is already well underway in the UK.
Banks in the City have been proactively hiring contractors to work on the vast technical challenges these living wills present, says Edward Ekins, managing consultant on the technology team at Twenty Recruitment.
"A handful of the largest banks in the City have been recruiting programme managers, project managers and business analysts to look at the data and liquidity requirements of writing living wills and the impact they will have on the trading environment," he says. "This is not just a technology concern; programme managers are looking at the changes needed in order for finance, operations, risk and IT to be compliant."
A programme manager working on living wills requirements can expect 1,000-1,200 a day, he says, project managers between 800-1,000 and business analysts 700-800 a day.
So far, any technical implementations are "tweaks rather than overhauls" and in-house developers have been redeployed. However, Ekins expects this to change as more of this work proliferates.
The 'living wills' are simply another of a long line of regulations that are forcing banks into a long-overdue shake-up their data management systems, says Rajeena Brar, banking consultant at IT think-tank Pierre Audoin Consultants.
"Data management has been a huge issue for banks for many years now, but most have simply been applying short-term fixes to the problem," she says. "It's only now that the regulators are forcing large institutions into a fundamental overhaul of their systems."
