Finance, Banking & Insurance Overview

Our 2020 Northern Ireland Salary Guide features Finance, Banking, and Insurance industry insight from our Specialist Recruiters- request a copy of the guide by emailing infoire@staffline.co.uk or read our Finance, Banking, and Insurance sector insight for 2020 below!

Accountancy

Overall, the Accountancy and Financial Services sectors have both seen a decline in demand from businesses who are not actively seeking agency workers, with temporary work demand down by 11 percentage points and permanent work demand down by 1. Northern Ireland is seeing the continued impact of candidates seeking lucrative opportunities elsewhere. Hiring levels in general are still healthy but the ongoing uncertainty is definitely making itself felt. There is still much to be positive about and this sector is still growing.

The Transactional Accounting sector is however outperforming expectations, despite the ongoing political climate, and goes from strength to strength. Payrollers, Credit Controllers, Accounts Assistants and Bookkeepers continue to be in high demand across Northern Ireland and even the spectre of Brexit is having less effect than other areas of the market. The future will be interesting as Artificial Intelligence systems become more widespread but the current outlook is positive and show no sign of abating.

Public Practice

Accountancy Practice recruitment continues to be highly candidate driven and this year has been no different. Practices with the ability to be flexible on study support and remuneration packages as well as offering an attractive work-life balance are managing to recruit for senior professionals most effectively. The highly educated Northern Ireland graduate population continues to provide organisations with suitable trainee candidates but organisations are having to revise their recruitment & retention strategies to attract and retain the best junior talent as the larger global organisations are significant sources 
of opportunity in this area.

Banking

There has been a noticeable slowdown in both overall sector growth and the volume of roles within the banking arena, however there is still significant recruitment in areas such as Compliance, AML, Technology and Legal areas within banking. The outlook for growth is slowing as global institutions implement risk mitigation projects in anticipation of volatility from the aftermath of Brexit.

Good quality and experienced candidates are still being sought after and in there has been a particular increase in roles for finance professionals with the ability to be mobile internationally. Although the recruitment outlook is challenging, there are still growth areas within the sector, and larger organisations are forecasted to have higher demand in short-term staff in the first quarter of 2020, with potential for this to continue throughout the year.