It’s simple: financial services headhunting is no longer a lucrative career

When a candidate speaks to a (good) headhunter he has a business conversation and an exchange takes place. He wants to make sure the headhunter opens him to good potential roles and wants to hear how he is paid relative to others and what is happening on the street. As a result he is a lot more open about his comp, current offers and motivations. When he receives a call from a bank's internal rec desk it is for ONE particular job in mind. He will react to that particular job accordingly (interested or not) and give a quick overview of his experience. That is about it! So when the internal rec goes to Mr Hiring Manager all he knows is whether candidate A fits the job spec and whether he wants to engage – he usually doesn't even know comp or production (it is after all illegal to divulge such info directly to a competitor). How can this compare to what a headhunter brings to the table – how candidate A was paid in relation to others in the team, why, where he has interviewed and the feedbacks (from the banks that saw him), his 3 year PL and comp etc. and I am not even talking about creating that legal buffer between the hiring bank and candidate. Launch a survey on Ef to all VP and above in front office and ask how many were brought in by internal recs ...

Yawn! Its lucrative if you are a good recruiter and add value rather than hinder hiring for a manager... simples! The recruiters who are now crying into their tea are the ones who are lazy useless blaggers with no market intel or real business acumen. A good recruiter is a good recruiter and will do what they do best i.e recruit even when they are not getting a high volume of roles chucked at them from HR teams/internal recruitment. A bad recruiter works on odds and volumes picking and choosing the roles to work on which they feel are easier fill. without the volume a bad recruiter is exposed because their lack of real knowledge shows, leaving good recruiter to shine by doing what they do best...delivering... and getting well paid for it too.

is this the same for Asia??

You have either spoken to just one very biased person or you are very misinformed. Banks who do not pay guarantees now pay fees based on a tiered system based on titles. To suggest that headhunters charge on salaries alone when bringing in VP, Dir or MDs is just wrong. It is obviously a lot harder than it was for a lot of people but people are still making money. Your article is obviously based on hearsay from an internal recruiter trying to promote his role. Why don't you actually look into internal recruitment and especially question the huge turnover of staff on these desks (they usually last 6-12 months, are underpaid and overworked and deal with low level and voluminous recruitment). Do you really think that senior Directors and MDs are brought in by internal recruiters? Do your survey. I dare you! They are gate keepers and they do find themselves in a position of relative strength and they do compress fees (when not corrupted enough to accept kick backs like it has recently been the case a an Helvetic bank) ... to go suggest that they are replacing headhunters is misleading. Banks need data points, they need to understand how their competitors pay, who they hire, they want market maps – headhunters have their fingers on the pulse and have this intel at hand. Internal rec legally could not even go gather that kind of intel without going into very grey areas + every time they interview or question someone that candidate expects feedback ...