Skills shortage in Island’s financial services sector

Friday 12th June 2009, 2:59PM BST.

Martin Spurling: Jersey has a shortage of skills for finance

JERSEY does not have enough skilled workers to meet the needs of the finance industry, according to a senior banker.

Martin Spurling, chief executive officer at Jersey-headquartered HSBC International, said this week that the Island was also a comparatively expensive place to recruit staff.

Mr Spurling said that the recent population debate had been ‘a key issue’ for the banking sector.

On a scale of one to ten, he said he would give the Island’s skills base four and the cost of the local workforce six.

‘There are not enough skills at the higher value end, recruitment is hard, and the cost is outrageous. We have a real problem,’ he told a seminar audience.

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1
gino risoli

June 13, 2009 at 11:29 pm

l wonder whether martin’s cost to the bank is equally affordable or not.

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2
lula

June 15, 2009 at 2:44 pm

It’s true – the amount of locals at manager/ director’s level in finance over here is seriously lacking – the main reason for this is lack of training. Companies aren’t willing to pay for local people to take the courses and qualifications needed to progress because as soon as they do they have to pay the locals more money. If they don’t the newly trained locals either immigrate to a different country that pay out higher wages or change to a higher paying firm in Jersey.

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3
Nellie Macon

June 15, 2009 at 5:27 pm

Even if you are a well qualified, competent local they still prefer to bring in immigrants because most UK banks and many financial institutions insist on their staff moving around to get experience in other branches / jurisdictions. This is their standard business procedure and unless local staff are prepared to leave Jersey it’s extremely difficult to move up the ladder.

In practice this means that there is very little succession planning / training given to replace J cats / senior staff as they always intend to bring someone new in. They go through the motions of advertising locally and interviewing people (simply to put on a show of complying with the Regulations and Undertakings Law) but there is never any serious intent of employing anyone other than someone from outside the Island. Even when they cannot find someone suitable from outside the Island they simply extend the current Jcat’s licence.

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