Official data suggests staff in China’s well-known financial institutions are now making RMB15,000 yuan ($2,000) a month and more.

China Construction Bank (CCB) Chairman Guo Shuqing said the most troubling problem facing his bank is a shortage of talented professionals. CCB, one of China’s four biggest commercial banks, wants to set up branches in New York and London and the bank is ‘hungry for people specialized in financial accounting, securities analysis, portfolio management, interest rate pricing and foreign exchange pricing’.

As the country moves to a more market-oriented financial system, financial talents are at a premium because there are so many issues to deal with. And as the government opens the banking sector, the human resources battle for the best and brightest in the financial sector has escalated.

HSBC China Chief Executive Richard Yorke, seen in our illustration,  said earlier this year said finding enough experienced staff and training them adequately was the toughest issue confronting the bank. HSBC expects to grow its headcount from 3,000 to 4,000 in China this year.

Wang Zhao, an economist with Beijing University’s China Center for Economic Research said, ‘There is no real finance education in Chinese colleges.The so-called finance education in colleges only consists of macro-control measures, such as monetary policy, that hark back to the days of the planned economy. What Chinese students want now is courses on securities analysis and portfolio management.’
Source: China View