INTRODUCTION
The Investment Management space in London and Europe continues to remain buoyant and extremely demanding for candidates across the Investments space. Many funds have been keen to hire diverse candidates across a range of roles and the ESG and Responsible Investing space remains the biggest focus for a lot of firms due to regulatory pressures on the horizon for 2022.
Role Profiles
We have seen a resurgence in hiring in the product development space as well as product management and product governance roles. Whilst the roles have needed candidates with strong product lifecycle experience and there has been a particular focus on Alternatives and Real assets, all the product roles have a focus on ESG and a strong knowledge on SFDR.
The pace of hiring in Alternatives and Private assets has outstripped supply and clients are having to be more creative in the candidate profiles that they will look at for these roles.
We have seen a distinct shift to looking at Junior hires where candidates can come in and take on some of the regulatory work for the team whilst learning this Alternative product space. Added pressure has been added by there being a good volume of day rate contract roles in the market which has put upward pressure on permanent salaries in order to compete against long term contracting opportunities in the market.
Performance analysis roles have been one of the busiest areas for the team going into Q3 and the focus remains mainly Fixed Income aligned. Roles have had a mix of standard attribution work but also adhoc analysis for investment teams and investment support work or project and system enhancement work. The most attractive roles have been those with an element of Investment support as these have appealed to candidates more as a slight move away from BAU performance work.
Again, demand has outstripped supply in this space and salaries have really varied across all levels of performance hiring, this has led to candidates having a huge variety of offers on the table and where salaries have not been as competitive, if there is an element of a move out of standard BAU performance, candidates have been more inclined to take a lower offer in order to diversify their experience.
Client services/Relationship focussed roles servicing Institutional clients remain popular. Where these roles have had a hybrid sales support/relationship focus the roles usually require a European language (usually German or French) as clients look to diversify their client base from a pure UK one to a more European one. We have also seen a focus on Japanese and Mandarin speakers as well.
Last but not least the roles within the ESG space remain one of our busiest areas of focus. The roles have varied from ESG focussed roles in product through to ESG Analysts with 1-3 years experience, senior ESG Analysts, Stewardship and Engagement roles and a number of Heads of opportunities.
Again where demand has outstripped supply, clients have had to rethink what types of profiles and experience they are keen to hire. For ESG analyst roles clients have been open to graduates of junior options but also candidates from vendors in the ESG space like ISS and MSCI. We have seen clients having to offer large increases on base salaries as well as sign on bonuses to attract candidates and also to negate the threat of counter offers.
Predictions
We envisage the market remaining extremely buoyant going into 2022. We expect to see more roles coming to market with a focus on ESG and RI as investment firms continue to focus on this space but also to ensure that they are set up in the best way to meet the regulatory demands in the ESG space.
We also expect to see clients continue to focus on more diverse hires and to do more to attract a more diverse candidate pool at both the junior level and more experienced hires as well. Finally, we envisage there being further demands for more European language speakers for roles in London moving into 2022.
RELEVANT ARTICLES:
https://www.igniteseurope.com/c/3348524/425684