Singapore beats Hong Kong in digital transformation

• Banks in Singapore hire a larger proportion of technology jobs with 20% of job postings
• There is a stronger focus on Information Security positions in top hiring Singapore

SINGAPORE and Hong Kong are often seen competing for the title of Asia's most important financial hub. This report by JobTech analyses the state of digital transformation in banks in both cities based on their hiring activities in 2018.

Top hiring Singapore banks posted more technology roles

While the top hiring banks in Hong Kong generally hire more positions than the top hiring banks in Singapore, the banks in Singapore hire a much larger proportion of technology jobs, with 20% of job posting being a technology job, as compared to 5% in Hong Kong.

Banks with significant presence in both cities  hire a larger number of technology jobs in Singapore

For instance, JP Morgan posted 640 technology jobs in Singapore and 170 in Hong Kong and DBS posted 630 technology jobs in Singapore and only 50 in Hong Kong.

Given that these banks have a significant presence in Hong Kong, it could suggest that they are basing most of their digitisation efforts in Singapore.

Business Intelligence/Analytics, Data Analytics and Application Engineering were the most sought-after technology domains

This is in line with banks' digital transformation initiatives and their push for analytics. The hiring trend for Business Intelligence/Analytics and Data Analytics positions is consistent across many of the large banks in recent years.

JP Morgan and OCBC seem to follow this trend to a lesser extent in 2018. OCBC technological domains are more spread out in Singapore with a slightly stronger focus in Information Security while JP Morgan has a deeper focus on Application Engineering.

It is also noteworthy that there is a stronger focus on Information Security positions in top hiring Singapore banks than its counterparts in Hong Kong, which is another indication of digitising efforts in Singapore, given that cyber-security plays a critical role in digitisation.

Breakdown (%) of technology jobs domains by top hiring banks in Singapore and Hong Kong in 2018.

The heatmap examines the breakdown of technology jobs posted by these top hiring banks by their technological domains, with darker shades showing higher prevalence and vice versa.

Most Sought-After Skills in Business Intelligence/Analytics , Data Analytics and Application Engineering

There are some similarities in terms of skills and domain knowledge areas across technological domains in Singapore and Hong Kong top hiring banks.

Business Intelligence/Analytics positions focused on business and finance related domain knowledge, while Data Analytics positions focused more on popular programming, database management and statistical skills used in Data Science.

Also, banks from both countries tend to look out for Java and Cloud skills sets for Application Engineering positions.

However, for the Data Analytics domain, there are more Big Data related technology skills such as Big Data and Hadoop in Singapore whereas Machine Learning Algorithms, SAS and R-Programming are more sought-after in Hong Kong.

Singapore banks are ramping up on its technological expertise more intensely

Not only are Singapore banks looking to hire more technological talents, they are also looking to hire for a wider variety of different domain expertise, which is often necessary for digitisation of a sector.