A good first quarter in the bank

The end of a very eventful first quarter in the financial services has now been and gone. There are some encouraging signs from the sector although it is still very early days and banking is still in intensive care. Barclays stood up to scrutiny by the FSA who said they would not need additional funding, the FTSE was back over 4000 last week and the G20 summit will hopefully yield some positive developments; even house prices rose in March according to the Nationwide’s Chief Economist, although one month does not a trend make. This news is tempered by announcements of large job cuts at RBS and Aviva in recent days; 650 of the losses at Aviva were contractors in the Business Change & IT space so clearly that area of the market is still under pressure.

Demand for interim managers within the sector as a whole has held up well in the first quarter and we are well placed to have a good year. However, there is evidence of downward pressure on rates from clients and many interims are taking a flexible view in order to maintain continuity of work.

A key challenge for Providers at the moment is to ensure that they continue to forge relationships with experienced interims and those new entrants to the market who are committed to interim management for the long term. There are high numbers of candidates in the market looking to fill gaps between permanent roles with some “contract work” and it is more important than ever for us Providers to remember what our core offering is. Andrew McIntee is Head of Financial Services and a Director at Interim Partners

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