Foreign banks ‘can deliver jobs boost’

THE new president of the Institute of Bankers has warned that the Irish banking industry will have to look to international banks for jobs growth in the coming years.

Aidan Brady, the current chief executive of Citigroup in Ireland, who became the first executive of a non-Irish bank to become president of the Institute, also says that the education and ability of those working in the industry will have to improve to keep Ireland as a financial centre

Mr Brady said the banking industry was “facing into another very tough year on the world economic and political front. Job losses in banking in the US and the rest of Europe are frightening.”

He said that if Ireland were to maintain jobs growth in banking, the growth would come from a focus on the international banking industry.

“If you look at growth in banking employment over the last ten years, it has been quite spectacular. It is up from 20,000 to over 36,000.

Amazingly, despite rationalisation and the inexorable introduction of technology, the clearing banks employ 31,000 of that total which is a clear indication of the growth in the domestic economy,” Mr Brady told the Institute’s annual general meeting.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think any of us expect the economy to grow at the same pace as was experienced in the late 1990s in the near future. Therefore, if we are to maintain job growth in the banking industry, I sense that this growth will come from a focus on the international banking industry.”

He believed the challenge facing the Institute was to provide training for the range of skills required, including foreign exchange, equity and bond trading, investment banking, asset management, lending, corporate finance, accounting, treasury and electronic banking to name but a few.