Five Singapore banks offer big pay rises in final hiring spree
Singapore’s already sizzling job market is about to get even hotter as the nation’s five new digital banks search for more staff in the final months ahead of their launch.
The five contenders comprise SeaMoney (Sea Group), GXS Bank (Grab and Singtel), Trust Bank (Standard Chartered and NTUC), and two yet-unnamed banks, which will be set up by Ant Group, and a consortium comprising Greenland Financial Holdings, Linklogis Hong Kong and Beijing Co-operative Equity Investment Fund Management, respectively.
Having mainly secured their C-suite and management talent, these digibanks are now focusing on hiring for operational, banking, and tech roles, three recruiters told eFinancialCareers.
The variety of positions on offer is large. On the finance end, they include jobs in risk, partnerships and channels, settlements and disbursements, regulatory compliance, and
customer onboarding to ensure a comprehensive launch strategy, prepare for early products, and grow deposit and lending books.
On the technology side, open roles span data analytics, software engineering, product management, UX/UI and cybersecurity to prepare platforms for users. Places are also open for marketing, operations, diversity and inclusion, and learning and development roles.
Grab, for example, is hiring a head of technology audit, credit risk models manager, lead data engineer, operations lead, and lead UX writer. Meanwhile, Trust Bank is hiring a solutions architect, credit risk specialist, business resilience specialist, regulatory compliance lead, scrum master, and principal architect.
Priya Gupta, a financial services manager for finance and governance at Robert Walters Singapore, gave a 20-50% increment range for candidates moving over from traditional banks, with higher offers going to strong tech candidates from fintech or digital banking backgrounds.
Lim Chai Leng, senior director of banking and financial services at Randstad Singapore, cited 15-25% for general candidates, and 20-30% for tech candidates. Anurag Garg, regional director at Michael Page Singapore, echoed the 20-30% figure for tech talent, adding that this is for junior to middle management roles.
Garg says candidates for non-tech roles might see similar overall salaries to traditional banks, but can “command a better title and more job flexibility, together with the chance to build something new from the ground up”.
“Since digital banks have a similar operating and team structure to a startup, candidates are more motivated by the opportunity to work in a tech-driven environment – where there are more opportunities to learn and work with innovative and new technology – than an above market-rate salary increment,” he adds.
To land the role, all three recruiters say jobseekers must display adaptability. Lim says digibanks are looking for self-driven and entrepreneurial candidates, while Gupta advises hopefuls to download and use a digibank app to “fully understand what you are getting into”.
“For candidates looking for a 9 to 5 job, this is not the right fit,” she adds. “This is a role for entrepreneurs who want to experience a once-in-a-lifetime launch of a digibank. The banks will also need to manage expectations about the reality of a digibank starting up.”
Photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash
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