UK
For compliance professionals, advisory is a very popular area. The main reason for this is that these roles require an individual to sit on the trading floor with the front office working closely with products and traders. As a result, they develop an innate understanding of the way the broader business works.
One common myth about compliance is that it’s boring and back-office focused. But regulatory pressure is now such an important part of banking that it’s become a very business-focused and interactive function. Working in compliance, you will be strongly involved in the decision-making process.
On a day-to-day basis, someone working in compliance advisory will be advising on deals, assessing whether new product and fund launches are logical for the business, considering the suitability of advice from the front office and looking at the impact of new regulations on existing products.
The good thing about compliance advisory is that people can go into it from a variety of backgrounds. While compliance experience is advantageous, we see individuals from legal, operations and accounting roles secure these roles. In-depth product knowledge is a must-have, and a skill set that’s in short supply in the existing market. At the very least, you will need experience of deal flow, equities or fixed income transactions and physical commodities, however. The thinking is that people with this experience can pick the compliance aspect of the job up over time.
Salary levels for compliance advisory professionals range from 60 – 80k at the AVP level, 75 – 100k at the VP level and 100 – 130k at director level. The role also offers excellent scope for career progression – most heads of compliance will have done a stint on advisory at some point in their careers.
Marina Law is manager of compliance recruitment at Robert Walters
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I heard that economists from bank of England are hired for compliance positions because they know very well the regulation is that true?
IT IS boring and back-office focused
IT IS boring but IT IS about a 1000 times more secure than being in a FO role during a downturn and they they always get to put the boot in when Banks need to get rid of FO staff or during the year end review when providing feedback on individuals to senior management. That outweighs the boredom, plus there’s always another sucker willing to step into a FO role to subsidize their salary. Combine that with them not having as much pressure or a crap work life balance and its not such a bad life after all.
Whilst the mix of both compliance/regulatory and product knowledge is essential to these roles, the issue in finding candidates with “gravitas” and a backbone of steal, who have strong enough personalities to deal with traders and fund managers is proving rather difficult. Furthermore, relationship building and buy-in, are imperative, being able to find solutions to enable, not hinder business, and find the way of least resistance. THESE are the “soft” skills that are highly sought after in Advisory roles… yet seldom found.
But such positions are very seldom- Morgan Stanley are looking for a director level at present. Very rarely would firms look to hire a junior- why? I previously did compliance advisory on the fixed income side. It is a totally different world from equities. But it’s an area that requires further regulation as much of it isn’t….the govt has also highlighted that in light of the current crisis that it’s an area that should be looked at for change.