Massive hiring drives in commercial and consumer banking by ANZ and Standard Chartered have the potential to push up mid-to-senior-level pay, as demand for specialist staff outstrips supply in Singapore.

ANZ, which currently employs about 600 staff in Singapore, clinched a deal earlier this week to buy some of RBS’s Asian assets, including its commercial and retail units in the city state.

The Aussie bank has already revealed its intention to recruit 1,000 extra staff there during the next three years. The news comes hot on the heels of Stand Chart’s plans to hire 300 priority bankers over a similar time period.

Both these recent announcements could have wider implications for the employment market because the forthcoming hiring surge will put upward pressure on salaries, comments Gary Lai, manager, financial services at Robert Walters.

ANZ’s recruitment has a front-office focus, but Singaporean consumer and commercial banking is not awash with professionals with suitable sales and/or products experience, he says. Moreover, there aren’t as many unemployed candidates in these two sector as there are in the redundancy-ravaged i-banking space.

With the talent pool fairly small, ANZ will inevitable look to poach from rival banks, especially for experienced positions. This will often trigger counter offers as firms won’t want to lose revenue-generating staff, according to Lai.

“This skill shortage means you have to pay a premium to attract professionals away from other banks. You can’t hire as many as 1000 people in somewhere like Singapore without it affecting salaries,” he says.

One headhunter, who asked not to be named, likens the impact on pay levels to when Barclays began bulking up about four years ago.

“Barclays wasn’t that big here before that, so like ANZ now, it was an outsider coming into the market and needing a lot of new staff. I don’t think we’ll see the upwards of 30 per cent increases that we did with the previous buoyant market, but a range of 15 to 20 per cent is certainly possible,” he adds.

At the mid-to-senior level, ANZ will find itself in a recruitment race with regional commercial banking titans HSBC and Standard Chartered, but group chief executive Mike Smith recently told Bloomberg that he is happy to take them on in Asia.

Not so joyous for juniors

While commercial/consumer wages will rise for experienced new recruits, jobs in the one-to-three-year range won’t command such high premiums, says Angela Kuek, manager, banking and financial services at Hudson.

Firms initially hunt for their junior staff within the local banking industry, but the scale of its recruitment means ANZ will probably have to cast its net wider.

“Besides ex bankers who are open to return to banking, candidates from other South East Asian countries might be considered, as might corporate-sector employees in client-facing sales and marketing roles,” explains Kuek.

Back-office blues

Meanwhile, support staff at the newly enlarged ANZ are more worried about keeping their jobs than boosting their salaries. Alex Thursby, chief executive for Asia-Pacific, Europe and America, told local media this week that back-office job cuts might be necessary.

Hopefully, however, any retrenchments will be minimal because until now, ANZ in Singapore was mainly an institutional bank, so there shouldn’t be much operational duplication with its new retail and commercial businesses.