Finance sector suffers manpower crunch as compliance costs rise: study

95% of finance leaders are having a hard time looking for applicants.

The cost of compliance in the city-state has been on the uptrend in the past three years now, giving major headaches to firms as they try to fill in financial posts with limited manpower supply.

According to a research by Robert Half, government regulations have inflated compliance costs in the city-state.

"The cost of compliance in Singapore is rising – which is a legacy of the global financial crisis resulting in a stricter regulatory environment. This rising cost requires companies to invest in educating and upskilling in-house staff or hiring compliance officers to navigate the changing landscape,” Robert Half Managing Director Matthieu Imbert-Bouchard said.

The study revealed that 95% of finance leaders said it is challenging to source qualified compliance professionals.

With this, Imbert-Bouchard argued that the surge in demand for such professionals has created skills gap within firms.

“As demand currently outweighs supply for compliance professionals, companies adhering to strict regulations need to proactively assess any skills gap within their teams, and assess whether their existing staff need further training or if they need to invest in onboarding additional staff, either on a temporary or permanent basis, to cover the increased compliance workloads,” he stated.