Britain’s financial technology industry could face a dearth of suitable employees to fill job positions if the next government tightens controls over immigration, says recruitment firm Morgan McKinley.
According to the Morgan McKinley London Employment Monitor, banks and financial services are the industries that are the most prolific in looking for suitable workers in tech. Morgan McKinley say that they usually buoy up hires from the international market.
“Immigration is becoming a theme in the UK elections and any regulatory tightening on immigration could have a negative effect on the burgeoning UK fintech sector and is a cause for concern to companies in the London,” said Hakan Enver, Operations Director, Morgan McKinley Financial Services. “Whilst there is much dialogue about the lack of roles available for home grown talent, the volume of opportunities doesn’t necessarily indicate that this is the case.
“With these regulatory demands and ever evolving change programmes, there is a continual need to source talent from international markets, simply because demand outweighs supply.”
Immigration is a hot topic for Britain’s biggest political parties as migrant inflows reached a “statistically significant” level last year.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 624,000 people immigrated to Britain,in the year ending September 2014. This is an increase on the 530,000 in the previous 12 months.
All political parties have said they’d try to more tightly control the number of migrants coming into the UK but the methods and measurements pledged, depend on the party.
Meanwhile, Morgan McKinley’s report showed that there was a 19% overall increase in professional services jobs in March, compared with the previous month.
However, only 1% of workers are looking to move. Over the last year, professionals seeking new roles decreased by 4%.
Morgan McKinley said that the recent CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey supports its own employment market assessment as there was a significant increase in optimism in the financial sector, with 59% of financial services firms saying they were more positive than three months ago.
“UK banks are reporting growing confidence, steep revenue growth and increasing profitability, despite an unexpected stagnation in business volumes. Banks are more positive about credit risk, as the value of non-performing loans are expected to remain low in the next quarter. Additionally, industry commentators do not expect interest rates to rise in the near future” said Kevin Burrowes, UK financial services leader at PwC.
Source: Business Insider
