Big Banking is Big Business.

When I started in recruitment, I was told that anytime I got a profile from "bulge bracket banks" I was to get them out to market quick-smart.

Apparently, these profiles didn't come to market as often as others, and when they did, they would be gobbled up quicker than you could say "Recruitment is cool" (Jokes, zero people say that).

In contrast to this, profiles from smaller international banks were considered "tier 2".

This was a blanket policy applied to the front office and back office and was pretty much part of the induction at recruitment agencies London-wide.

Believe it or not, the early 2010s were err... interesting in recruitment tactics.

I was fresh off the plane from NZ and didn't understand.

To me, it smacked a little of classism (and a slight slink of racism) in the way these candidates were viewed.

The Big Banking Brain Drain.

In about 2016, clients from smaller international banks started to ramp up (I'll give you a clue why... it rhymes with wines) and targeted recruitment from the bigger banks became my hobby, passion, and talent.

Not only this, but the salaries were starting to reach parity, more I think driven by fines and the need to recruit big bank profiles into smaller institutions - they simply had to pay what these experts wanted.

And experts they were. To give the credit as due, many of the financial crime specialists in the bigger banks had been toe-to-toe with the regulator, in a way these smaller institutions hadn't.

They had implemented policies, procedures, systems and built teams in the way the regulator wanted. Smaller, less scrutinised firms wanted the cheat sheet, so paid for it.

Don't believe me?

How many "centres of excellence" a-la-HSBC were set up city-wide, and still are to this day? ??.

Do you think I'm sexy?

"Yes, we do think you're sexy. And we are going to pay you a lot of money."

FinTechs, 2018 - 2022

The trend of big banking experience being the cheat sheet continued. Now we have the FinTechs coming in, with the "vanity hire" trend.

Don't get me wrong, the main goal was to hire people with the knowledge to fix and formulate strong financial crime functions.

We can't want to take away from the skills and expertise of the people who were hired to lead this new market -it is a whole job into itself shaping a new compliance culture in these firms.

But it was a liiiiiiittle interesting many of the people hired were market "big dogs"

This a little way of saying to the FCA and the market (investors...) "Yoooo whooo, we take FCC seriously, look we have hired XX and they will make all our FCC problems go away".

Swimming In Candidates

Do you know what my clients would have bitten my arm off for in 2016 -2022?

Strong financial crime specialists, with both big banking know-how and experience in a smaller institution.

I'm not just talking about the big hires either, AVP and above, this is the golden ticket (it still is).

Well, thanks to a hugely concentrated effort from the smaller banks, and FinTech market, this little genie can grant that wish.

The Changing Tide

Which brings me to my point. What do we now do with all of the big bank pedigree profiles?

To be honest, for certain profiles the only real home for them is other big banks.

Particular areas of bigger banks, don't translate to market. I am talking roles like financial crime triage or the FIUs.

Interestingly, 1LOD big banking profiles do pop up in larger fintech and payments firms as the role is about the same if the team size equates.

It has to be said, the ideal candidate would always have a combo of both though.

That's fine, right? Not all big banking experience, want to move into smaller institutions.

True.

Yet, not all have a choice. We are seeing the redundancies of these functions in the bigger banks, as they become near-shored, off-shored, or simply dismantled.

Every week I have more and more messages from people wanting to explore a move, and I am not sure how to help them.

If You are a Big Banking Candidate

The trickiest part is the market simply doesn't understand what you do.

I very rarely will get a profile from a big bank, that explains what their function does. Many assume firms will have this or exposure to what it means to have a triage FCC function, or a financial crime CEO office.

Try to add a quick blurb to explain it.

The other challenges we hear from clients are "they are too siloed", "they don't know how to do the doing" or "they are too used to delegating a lot of the job to another function"

I only mention this as I'd want to know what the market perception of my type of profile was, so I could counter it in my CV with extra points, or an explanation.

If you are in market and need someone to laymanize your CV, send it to me or any other trusted recruiter and we can offer pointers.

But to be honest - you're better to get a friend to read it and tell you if they know what you do.

Some Good News

It is going to be a competitive market this year, we have the highest application rate that I have seen in a very long time.

The good news?

It's not all redundancy-led - many are leaving for pastures new.

And so... the recruitment-merry-go-round spins fast as always.