Philip Quinn, managing consultant, banking and finance, Kelly Services Hong Kong

As a result of tightening regulations in the past few years, banks and other financial institutions have strengthened their compliance or risk management departments as a priority. Subsequently, a number of cost areas and non-core-business departments were scaled back in terms of human capital to increase available spend in these critical areas.

However, while we are currently seeing a focused return to revenue generation this year, and thus an increase in demand for additional headcount in these areas, banks will still need to ensure client confidence remains high. Therefore compliance, risk, KYC (Know Your Customer) and client on-boarding teams will still need to remain at optimum strength.

So, while pay increases will generally rise in line with inflation rates year on year, salary increases to attract those who wish to change jobs in the areas of compliance and risk have seen an increase of more than 30 per cent. Conversely, bonuses of about six months' salary are being discussed in order to retain staff in these key positions.