Mandarin is fast becoming the de facto language in Hong Kong’s financial services industry and bankers who can only speak English and/or Cantonese are being frozen out of the job market.
But which functions demand the language more than others? We looked at 15 job sectors on the eFinancialCareers CV database and worked out the proportion of candidates in each one who are fluent in Mandarin. The results are in the chart below:
You are increasingly unlikely to get a client-facing finance job in Hong Kong unless you know Mandarin. For example, as investment bankers focus on helping expansionist mainland private companies make overseas acquisitions, 72% of Hong Kong candidates in investment banking/M&A are fluent in Mandarin. Junior IBD analysts we spoke to last year anecdotally put the percentage of Mandarin speakers among new graduate intakes in Hong Kong at up to 80% and say mainlanders are being recruited at the expense of Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers.
The percentages are similarly high in other sectors requiring regular contact with Chinese clients. Private equity tops the table at 77%, while corporate banking and asset management chart 67% and 65% respectively.
After recent influxes of Chinese accountants into Hong Kong, the proportion of fluent-Mandarin accounting and finance resumes stands at 65%. And it’s the same percentage in equities, which doesn’t bode well for Western equities traders who are looking for new jobs after being laid off by Barclays and other firms currently culling roles in that sector.
Hong Kong’s private banking sector is partly, but not exclusively, focused on serving Chinese clients – and it 60% Mandarin mark reflects this.
Compliance and risk both fall under 60% because continued skill shortages in those function mean banks can’t afford to be too picky about language requirements.
Unsurprisingly, operations and technology jobs – which demand comparatively little client interaction – bring up the rear of our chart. Banks in Hong Kong employ technology staff from around the world – only 38% of them are fluent in Mandarin, according to our CV database.
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