Keeping an eye on financial professionals

Singapore - With the global financial industry running into trouble and Singapore feeling the effects of the credit crunch, perhaps banks and financial centres need to hire right in the first place.

Even if high-tech software is introduced or there is an overhaul of banking processes to ensure proper financial practices, banks or financial institutes would not be able to constantly keep an eye on their talent. Pan Zaixian, manager of financial services (Banking & Finance) for Robert Walters, maintains it is simply because greed is part of man's nature. "Despite whatever structures are being put in place, smart people will find ways around them to make money for themselves."

While Pan feels that financial traders are a different breed of people as they are able to take huge risks in the market, they should not be blamed completely. "It is easy to look in hindsight here. But when the banks are making money, the shareholders are getting good dividends and the share prices keep going up, nobody seems to care about the risk."

Hence, it is up to the banks' hiring managers to select the right candidate in the first place, as they are the ones "who condones and facilitates the undertaking of these higher risk activities", reasons Pan.

Yet it is not up to the headhunters to change that as they can only fulfil their clients' wishes. Pan says, "Our over riding directive by our clients is to find the people who can make money for the bank."

Nonetheless, a tightly regulated financial environment could make Singapore less attractive to foreign players. Pan suggests that Singapore authorities can only ring fence the protection for domestic players and retail consumers from these high-risk exposures. He says this will help the city to remain appealing to "market makers who want to be based here".