Key CTRM Recruitment Findings
Commoditas Partners has published its key CTRM Recruitment findings based on data collected through interviews with hiring managers of leading trading and investment companies, system integrators, consultancies and software vendors.
Key findings include:
- A shortage of skilled candidates is the biggest recruitment challenge
- Software Vendors and System Integrators are the biggest hirers of CTRM skills
- CTRM Solution Architects are the most in demand positions
- Openlink holds the highest CTRM market share for CTRM jobs
- The UK remain most dominant hiring country
Recruitment Levels
46% of companies are looking to hire in 2016 compared to the actual 39% in 2015.
For end-user hiring, agricultural and LNG companies feature high up in the list as they opt to build or buy TRM systems to enhance their trading and risk management capabilities. Oil and Metals businesses are looking to maintain their staff or shed resources whilst over two thirds of the software vendors will increase hiring by at least 10%.
Recruitment Challenges
Over 50% of CTRM hiring managers recognise the shortage of available experienced candidates and a very low 5% see too many applicants as a recruiting challenge.
We are finding that the skill curve fails to keep up with the ever-changing TRM Business process, coupled with the evolving technology and regulatory change; resulting in a competitive, candidate driven market where nearly a quarter of hiring managers seeing counter offers as a major recruitment issue.
Hiring
End users are predicted to make only 2 out of every 10 CTRM hires next year. We see this as a result of companies continuing to outsource CTRM projects to consulting services and vendor professional services.
2015 witnessed a few vendor amalgamations that will demand a significant increase of staff whilst others look to grow off the back of a fruitful 2016 pipeline and will continue to be the biggest hirer in 2016.
Job Market Share
Openlink (Endur) seals up just shy of a third of the total CTRM software recruitment market share with both Allegro and Brady increasing their share over the last 12 months.
RightAngle, SunGard (Aligne) and TPT are all down on last year. Other CTRM systems such as: Agiboo, Aspect, Trayport Contigo, Amphora and Gen10 haven’t yet created a recruitment market due to its ‘plug in and play’ nature.
Hard to fill jobs
Solution Architects have always been a rare commodity but non so more than now with 32% of hiring managers see this role as their most difficult to fill job. An interesting find on this study was that over half of end users see this role as their most important hire when CTRM software is involved.
Other interesting findings here is over 60% of vendors and system integrators find it difficult to hire proven SME’s and over 80% of consultancies are challenged when hiring project managers and business leads.
Salaries
CTRM salaries are down around 5% on last year, technical disciplines take the biggest hit due to more offshore resources being implemented on projects and less reliance on local talent.
Another theory behind the decrease in salary maybe due to 78% of hiring is made by third party organisations with budget constraints due to an overcrowded bidding playing field.
Type of hire
Permanent hires are up 11% over the last 12 months, which mirrors increase in vendors, SI’s and consultancies hiring CTRM skills and their preferred option to hire permanent staff.
An interesting find in this study was that 85% of contract hires were by end users who chose to ‘cherry pick’ their own staff, avoiding using external implementation services. The same clients are experimenting a ’try before you buy’ recruitment strategy which is working well for both company and client.
European Jobs Market Share
UK loses out on 4% of the market share due to the EMIR impact on a handful of Investment Banks trading commodities. Over the years, Switzerland has developed into the global center of commodities trading and we are now seeing it catch up with growing appetite for CTRM talent.
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