Following 12 months of relatively steady growth of Japan’s GDP, this year’s second quarter results – a rise of three per cent, the largest upturn since early 2016 – is confirmation that the country is heading in the right direction.
In this buoyant environment the nation’s financial services (FS) industry is taking the opportunity to invest in its technology, driving a demand for candidates with which to enhance finance technology departments.
Candidates are required in two major areas in the coming year:
IT Governance
- IT auditor
- Information security officer
- Information security
- Information Risk Officer
Front/Middle Office Investment Banking
- Developers (Java, C++)
- Application/Production Support
- IT Business Analysts/Project Managers
“The financial markets have remained strong over the last year or so, which is leading to investment in systems enhancement in terms of stability and performance,” explains Marc Burrage, Managing Director at Hays Japan, “There are a number of areas in which the finance technology sector has become a primary area of consideration for banking and insurance firms.”
One of these such areas is the ‘inhousing’ of IT roles. Until recently Japanese companies have regularly used vendors, not only for development work, but also for infrastructure management and application testing. However, with many companies seeing diminishing returns with regards to cost efficiency they are looking to move projects inhouse.
“There is a particular issue with regards to the way that any knowledge used and developed is retained by the vendor, and when the project is completed that expertise goes with it,” Marc says.
“To rectify this companies are looking to us to recruit candidates who can fulfil the tasks of vendors directly, so that they can retain not only the expertise, but also the control, whilst saving costs in the long run.”
As the rising GDP is encourages FS activity, Japan’s government is looking to both safeguard and overhaul the country’s banking industry through a string of new regulatory reforms. So that companies can conform with the new changes, firms are on the lookout for finance technology specialists in the IT governance area, including IT auditors and information security officers and managers, areas which are candidate short.
To address these shortages firms are implementing a number of tactics that would enable them to fill vacant positions. One strategy is encouraging internal mobility, with companies rewarding experienced staff with upward moves, and then turning to Hays for backfill hiring at more junior levels. There is also a desire to recruit more female candidates as the push for greater gender diversity gathers pace.
“Technology is very much a male-dominated industry, but banks and insurance companies are looking to rectify this by prioritising female candidates for technical roles. Companies are also showing flexibility with female candidates who are perhaps not as strong as their mail competitors, providing additional training as well as enacting policies around maternity leave support, work/life balance and flexible working hours,” Marc notes.
Companies are also looking overseas to resolve the candidate shortage, particularly in the application development sectors of investment banks, where fluency in the languages of C++ and Java is more important than that of Japanese.
“Companies are looking primarily to Hong Kong and Singapore, to where many finance technology experts relocated following the offshoring movement of five years ago. But they are also looking to the U.K. and Europe, and Hays’ Globalink service is proving a successful source of highly experienced finance technology candidates,” Marc says.
This year has seen volatility in the jobs market, and as the finance technology field is particularly specialised the market continues to be candidate short, with the volume of high-quality candidates at a premium.
“Although the annual recruitment cycle is coming to its traditional cooling-off period, the market this year remains lively with candidates continuing to look around, even if it is speculatively with an eye on the future. As they do so they are finding that, if you are a good candidate becoming active in the market, then you are potentially going to have a number of options.”
An overview of what other trends have been observed in Japan’s finance technology sector can be viewed below.
- Exacerbating the candidate shortage for traditional financial institutions is the rise of fintech startups, which are proving attractive to younger candidates thanks to the lure of the innovative technologies of non-centralised crypto-trading and blockchain trading.
- To combat this the FS giants are holding events extoling the advantages of working with the more established companies as well as showcasing their own technologies
- These technologies, such as digitechs to be integrated with existing systems and automation, are leading to an increase in analytics and big data strategies at investment banks and insurance companies.
- The trend for offshoring of financial technology departments is reversing, with companies finding cost savings not making up for the lower quality of service provided.
To read the full Inside Story report of financial technology in Japan, please click here.
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About Hays
Hays plc (the "Group") is a leading global professional recruiting group and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The Group is the expert at recruiting qualified, professional and skilled people worldwide, being the market leader in the UK and Asia Pacific and one of the market leaders in Continental Europe and Latin America. The Group operates across the private and public sectors, dealing in permanent positions, contract roles and temporary assignments. As at 30 June 2017 the Group employed 10,000 staff operating from 250 offices in 33 markets across 20 specialisms. For the year ended 30 June 2017:
– the Group reported net fees of £954.6 million and operating profit (pre-exceptional items) of £211.5 million; – the Group placed around 70,000 candidates into permanent jobs and around 240,000 people into temporary assignments;
– 24% of Group net fees were generated in Asia Pacific, 49% in Continental Europe & RoW (CERoW) and 27% in the United Kingdom & Ireland; – the temporary placement business represented 59% of net fees and the permanent placement business represented 41% of net fees;
– Hays operates in the following markets: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Mainland China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA.