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Alex Edwards- Sales Director for London The main issues we currently see affecting the FS industry as a result of Brexit is the uncertainty around the medium to long term plans for businesses, mainly due to them waiting on an actual decision to be made and some finality around what the actual outcome is, which also has a knock-on effect for their employees, especially the EU passport holders that are based in the City. Uncertainty is never good for productivity in business and those left in a state of limbo as to whether they should stay or not, are certainly the most affected & the level uncertainty has wider implications not just for FS industry. However, with the above being said, as a London based recruitment agency with a solid footprint in the FS industry & despite the general rumblings within the city, there are many benefits of Brexit for FS. The best recruitment agencies are solution lead & can move with the markets, whether it be market conditions, technology advancements or client base, the best agencies see opportunity and thrive with positive results. We have benefitted as a region over the last 6 months, due to early-analysis & predicting the current scenario being played out, way back 2 years ago, when we made the key decision to increase our market share & client base away from the city & have since had incredible success in attracting top talent out of London and placing them into rival financial hubs within the EU - from a 95% London focussed business we now operate at 85% within the EU and are now seeing record levels of business from it. What does that mean for the job market? At the moment, the good news is for those that are flexible in their personal circumstances that the EU FS market is flourishing. Our historical UK FS client base is still buoyant, but lacks the growth of their European counterparts, outside of FS we have seen a more dramatic negative affect within our UK client base that is more aligned to manufacturing, mainly via our Life-Sciences & Tech teams, where there is a real lack of new investment in either new or existing manufacturing facilities, which we believe is no doubt a cause for a significant negative impact, on UK recruitment in those markets more significantly. Again though, On the flipside, Europe is incredibly buoyant in these markets & are looking much healthier in relation to manufacturing. Life-Science, in particular, has a high demand for highly skilled STEM resource & FS is particularly busy with a lot of blue-chip manoeuvring within Europe to counter any blowback for when the UK finally does leave the EU. If you work in banking at the moment then it will remain a strong career option. Brexit will create what we see as different opportunities & for those that are most flexible in terms of location & possess language skills, then the more opportunities that will become available will & are great right now, If not, London will always want and need top talent & as competition & demand increases with more options across Europe, a slight shortage of skills in the City might not be a bad thing for those golden-handcuffed to London. Other trends affecting the FS & Banking industry, are obviously the next gen of digitization across the industry with the emergence of cloud and the importance of cybersecurity during that evolutionary process. A cyber-attack is launched every 40 seconds and due to the important information of the data banks have & hold, they are a prime target. Any successful large scale attack could be truly damaging to a brand, It is widely predicted by industry experts who say a widespread attack could act as a catalyst for another global financial crisis. As a consequence the amount of investment in this area has increased across the industry in recent years, experts would argue though, perhaps not enough & the merger of skills and departments into cybersecurity has been interesting, so seeing long term risk & Audit professionals become more merged into Tech/Digital Risk and Cyber Resilience within IT Audit has created new opportunities within traditional areas of FS & the same for OT security within engineering environments create a new career path for those wanting the exposure to it, where both ourselves and our candidate portfolio have benefited from greatly. If your searching for a new role, in particular banking, finance, technology and life sciences then contact us on info@hamlynwilliams.com or call 0203 675 2920 for a consultation.