Investment banks are increasingly looking towards other industries for technology roles where specific financial product knowledge is not central to the job.

Financial product knowledge has typically been a pre-requisite (rather obviously) for recruiting techies into investment banking roles. It’s also one of the key reasons why they’re able to earn significantly more than their counterparts in other industries.

However, firms are realising the value of experience outside of the financial sector and, as long product knowledge isn’t absolutely key to the role, have begun hiring from industry.

“Banks are delving into industry, and poaching best of breed technologists who can bring something new to the table,” says one IT in finance headhunter who declined to be named. “These are predominantly around programme management within applications and infrastructure, development heads for non-product aligned areas and a lot of e-commerce client technology.”

One example of this is Tim Mason, who joined Deutsche Bank from BP this year as a director to run configuration management, according to recruitment sources.

It remains a slightly sensitive issue, however. With investment banks generally paying more for technical expertise – and the more exotic product knowledge, the greater higher the salaries – the assumption is that recruiting from outside the industry is an easy way to cut costs.

Recruiters working with the banks on these hires admit that cost-saving is a motivation for looking outside of the financial sector, but not the primary one.

“The fact is that there’s only a finite amount of technological expertise within the investment banking sector, and the healthy levels of recruitment means many firms have to look elsewhere. They also naturally bring new ideas with them because of their exposure to different industries,” says one financial IT recruiter.