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The Indian economy in 2013 looked inviting to players who were more inclined towards off-shoring roles to India. This led to a surge in demand for senior roles across the finance, operations and analytics functions, where techno-finance continued to be in demand as organisations were trying to upgrade and integrate their ERP platforms.
A lingering trend was seen in the product control function, which continued to be in the hiring spotlight. While some banks began setting up their teams from scratch, others were already equipped with this function and worked towards reinforcing it with international products that would enhance it further. The combination led to a strong demand for such skill sets. At the VP and director level, the NRI candidate pool remained a favourite.
Analytics sustained its popularity, with risk analytics being an exception to the norm. The growing demand of regulators and emphasis on risk, control and compliance further fuelled the demand for such roles as the year wound up. With the world economy reassembling, the New Year looks promising.
The year 2014 is expected to see an influx of international players in the market. With on-shore companies trusting India as an ideal location to off-shore roles and with a rise in demand for improving the cost to revenue ratio in Indian shared services, more roles will be driven towards this market. Singapore, initially the hub for shared services functions in finance, operations and technology has turned lacklustre. The sector will see a more specialised approach to recruitment, based on financial profiles, due to the growing complexity of the finance function at the middle and senior levels.
Who will be most sought after?
With the incoming banking licences and banking looking to revamp itself into a technologically evolved sector, the industry would see a significant uptick in positions at the VP and director level.
Customer identity authentication represents a key challenge to banks in balancing a positive customer experience, while not compromising risk processes that are needed to establish authenticity of the customer identity. Professionals specialised in risk, fraud analytics and product control will be among the most sought after candidates.
There will also be a hike in demand for tax professionals, as the focus of the government to increase tax income will require companies to have stronger tax department relationships in place. Most senior HR and banking heads seem to be in consensus that the average salary hike would be between 8-10 per cent in the banking sector, while the non-banking sector would see hikes between 10-12 per cent. This would be slightly below the average hikes people received in 2013.
Every HR manager finds himself at the crossroads when it comes to retaining top talent while catering to emergent roles in the industry. Both need to be addressed judiciously to encourage the workforce. The coming year will see senior positions impacted the most in terms of salary hikes as compared to last year.
While the big picture is promising, recruiters are advised to pull up their game as plenty of niche roles are expected to open up in the Indian market. There is a definite paucity of the right talent for such roles in India. This is especially true for senior-level positions. On-shore financial services organisations would need to remain slightly flexible while filling these roles from the Indian pool, although they view India as a talent pool that is economical. An alternative solution would be to employ internal talent from their overseas locations or even culling out the NRI talent pool from markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, the US, the UK and the West Asia. The latter might prove expensive.
The recruitment market is challenging, yet highly promising. In 2013, companies have been hesitant in closing positions due to the economic uncertainty. There has been an unusual focus on the cost of recruiting resulting in many positions taking longer to be filled. The outlook this year is certainly bullish.
Nilay Khandelwal, director, Michael Page India
