Have you reached vice president (VP) level at a bank in Singapore? Are you expecting regular bumper pay rises now that you’re a (relatively) senior staffer who’s supposedly making or saving your bank more money than your younger colleagues are?
You may want to rethink your expectations. We’ve looked through the Singapore salary survey from recruiters Robert Walters to find out how 2016 maximum base salaries for VPs compare with last year.
The results reveal that a mere seven finance job functions received year-on-year increases – the rest stayed flat. The table below shows the percentages by which pay went up in these outlier jobs.
Surprisingly, the top two functions – capital markets and corporate finance – both fall within front-office investment banking. Although Dealogic data shows that Southeast Asia investment banking volumes declined last year (by 3% in M&A, 33% in ECM, and 5% in DCM), headhunters in Singapore note a talent shortage at VP level. Banks cut graduate recruitment after the 2008 financial crisis and now people with six to eight years’ experience are thin on the ground, which is driving up pay.
Investment banks in Singapore have also followed the global trend of boosting salaries to partly compensate for shrinking bonuses.
The pay-rise table features two functions, internal audit and transaction banking, where the job market has been tight for several years and skill shortages are lingering into 2016.
However, risk and compliance jobs don’t feature on the list, suggesting that banks are no longer aggressively recruiting at VP level in the middle-office.
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