As 2011 draws to a close amid general gloom about the financial services job market, it's difficult to reflect on any sectors that have had a genuinely good year.

However, some areas north of the border have remained relatively resilient, while certain sectors have felt the pain more others. Here is our considered reflection on 2011:

2011 was a good year for:

1) Investment operations

Inevitably, with redundancies commonplace within a large number of international financial institutions, the back office operations in Edinburgh and Glasgow have been impacted. While it's only https://news.efinancialcareers.com/69230/investment-banking-operations-recruitment-in-scotland-has-suddenly-gone-very-frosty/ Barclays that has announced formal plans to scale back, most firms have curtailed any recruitment plans.

Nonetheless, there's no denying that this year has generally been one of expansion for most investment operations companies in Scotland. BNY Mellon said it was recruiting an extra  60 staff this year, BlackRock unveiled plans to hire 250 and State Street is taking on  90 more people in Edinburgh.

More recently, the sector has looked decidedly frosty, but it's been a relatively good year for investment operations professionals in Scotland.

2) Change management professionals

While most people in financial services have been fretting about job security, the biggest concern of change management professionals north of the border has been whether to take a permanent or contract position.

With most financial services organisations, and RBS and Lloyds in particular, shaking up everything from finance, IT, risk and HR, change management professionals have been in demand for the past two years and, so far, this shows no sign of abating.

3) Fund management pay

Scotland's self-styled 'big boutique' Martin Currie reinstated its bonus payments earlier this year and paid an average of £110k for each of its 261 employees. This was, however, reflective of a wider trend of both paying bonuses and increasing pay within asset management firms.

This theme has continued even in the face of the current economic turmoil. Portfolio managers have seen bonuses increase by 30% this year, according a recent https://news.efinancialcareers.com/69253/asset-managers-are-increasing-pay-but-scotland-is-not-the-place-to-be-for-big-bonuses/  PwC survey, and base pay has increased by 4% on average. Sales and distribution staff, which have been affected by market uncertainty, have not seen any increases in pay, however.

2011 was a bad year for:

1) Fund manager job prospects

Pay may have been on the up, but unfortunately most fund managers in Scotland lost their appetite to expand this year, particularly in the second half as the troubles in the eurozone really hit both performance and assets under management.

Redundancies still seem unlikely, but most firms north of the border have pressed the pause button on recruitment. The exception is Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), which has hired over 100 people this year.

It's not all plain sailing at SWIP, however, as it cancelled its annual graduate intake this year. Generally, it's become a lot more competitive for those attempting to break into the industry in Scotland.

 2) Employment within the Scottish banks

The large redundancy announcements from both RBS and Lloyds Banking Group have continued to emerge throughout this year. Most recently, Lloyds unveiled that a massive  15,000 further jobs were due to be cut and RBS has continued to pare back its investment banking functions.

Before this, there had been headcount shrinkage of around 26,000 in the state-owned banks. Obviously, not all of these have hit Scotland, but around 9,000 jobs have been lost within the organisations north of the border – or over a third of the total.

Sadly, the job cuts haven't really slowed in 2011, with 2,400 roles axed north of the border in the first six months of the year.

3) Life and pensions

Two large life and pensions firms with significant Scottish operations – Standard Life and Aegon – have been steadily scaling back their headcount since announcing cost-cutting initiatives last year.

Standard Life had saved £20m in staff expenses for the year to August, as part of the three-year cost-cutting programme that will eventually eliminate £100m from its cost base by 2012. Late last year, it said that it would cut 600 jobs – 480 of which would hit its Scottish HQ – and these have been steadily implemented throughout 2011. Most recently, in November, it eliminated nearly 70 IT, facilities and telephony jobs and 95 in its customer services division.

Aegon, meanwhile, is looking to save £80m. In May, it said it was cutting nearly 213 jobs in its marketing, IT and support functions and followed this up with over 100 redundancies, predominantly in Edinburgh, in September.