Where?

All major banking centres, plus specialist IT sites.

Employers?

All major financial services companies.

So you have an interest, a qualification or a degree in IT . . . where next?

The UK may have a successful computer games industry, but someone with IT skills and a good level of education is much more likely to end up working for a bank or an insurer. HSBC alone spends £2.5 billion on its information technology. Financial services account for 25% of all computer servers sold.

IT in financial services can mean anything from helpdesk work (helping other staff to overcome any IT glitches they have) to building and programming gigantic computer grids and supercomputers.

IT departments vary dramatically between different companies. The big retail banks and insurers have massive IT departments and rely on huge mainframes (or equivalent-scale networks of smaller systems) to manage the huge amounts of data and transaction information they generate each day. There are enormous opportunities both for the technically gifted, and for those people interested in planning and management.

Investment banks tend to have smaller teams. However, you can be working at the very cutting edge of technology - a nanosecond’s difference in response times can be enough to gain a huge advantage over the competition. Some investment banks are even moving into the world of quantum physics in order to get their electronic trades done quicker than their rivals.

Finally, bear in mind that if you are good - and, vitally, if you continue to develop your skills - then virtually no IT-related job will be out of bounds later in your career.

Where can I start?

For school leavers with IT skills and GCSEs in maths and technology/communications, IT support jobs may be the best point of entry. This could be on a helpdesk or in an operational role — managing systems, installing new ones, or cabling up the tangle of wires that lies under all banking and insurance offices.

Graduates in IT-related subjects have a wider range of options, from programming roles to related areas such as systems analysis, or even (when you understand a bit more about the business) business analysis.

Finally, graduates in other disciplines may well find opportunities on the project-management side of IT, and many professional bankers and insurers go into project management as they develop their careers.

Where can I go?

If you aspire to the top rung of the IT-related career ladder, there are basically two ways you can go:

• the technical route, which culminates in your effectively becoming an IT 'guru'
• the admin/management route

Both routes can lead to the very highest rewards.

Technical guru

The key here is continually to develop your technical skills.

Many IT departments in banks and insurers employ large numbers of contract staff. Look at their rates of pay, as advertised in any of the leading IT trade magazines (for example, the contract pages of Computer Weekly, Computing or IT Week) and you will see that the rates go up in relation to the most up-to-date skills.

So, if you keep yourself informed about developments and learn the latest software environments, you will be of more value.

The advantage of having cutting-edge skills can best be seen in the area of software development. Most banks and insurers prefer to use off-the-shelf or package software as much as possible, since it is a lot cheaper than developing their own. However, because of the huge scale of their needs (as in retail banking), or because they need the very latest technology in order to gain a competitive edge (as in an investment bank), they are often forced to develop their own software.

If you are a C# (one of the current batch of computer languages used) developer, the average daily rate for a contractor in the UK is £450. However, in the City of London, you should be looking at upwards of £600.

If, on the other hand, you prefer a permanent job (and contracting can be pretty risky, so it won’t suit everyone), then the average salary for IT posts advertised in the trade press with the magic word 'banking' in the job description now reaches £60,000 a year.

People who develop systems for traders can often earn into the hundreds of thousands. A very select few even manage to get themselves into the trader’s bonus scheme and can earn those legendary megabucks!

It is always worth keeping an eye on your value by looking at sites like ITJobsWatch.

Project management, then the management team

This is the other route to the top. Many people, including lots of bankers and insurers with experience of project work, go into IT project management. Whether a project is small or large, it requires good management of the IT staff and good management of the business people who are actually paying for the project, which can be very challenging!

Project management is stressful, but it is well rewarded, and it teaches people to manage the most complex of business operations. Because the projects in banking and insurance tend to be so big and so business-critical, project managers in this sector tend to be even better paid than those working elsewhere.

Also, while many other IT jobs, such as basic software development, have gone abroad, many banks will keep their project teams close to their main users in the UK.

Project management will put you on the path towards management of the entire IT function. IT directors of financial services companies — now usually called something like ‘Chief Information Officer’ — can earn large amounts of money, much more than in most other industries.

Qualifications and career progression

• If you go down the technical route, stay up to date. Qualify in new software packages and languages as often as is practical. Realistically, this may not be all that often, since you also need actual experience of using a system. So it is important to do your research and make sure you learn the packages that will make you most attractive to employers.
• If you go down the management route (and this applies to many developers as well), learn what your industry does. Systems analysts, business analysts and project managers all need to understand how banking and insurance processes work. Indeed, people in IT often know more about the business than the people using their systems!

There are plenty of formal qualifications, but often it is the commercial courses in new languages or project-management techniques that really sell. Keep an eye on the trade press, see what qualifications attract the best rates of pay, and get them.