If you’re working for a bank or fintech firm in Asia and you want to swap sectors, good luck. Recruiters in Singapore and Hong Kong say fewer technology candidates are shifting from banks to startups (and vice versa) than they were before the pandemic. Before you even attempt a move (either way) between the two sectors, it’s more important than ever to understand the key differences between banking and fintech when it comes to the job market. We asked several tech recruiters to highlight what...

Sometimes the call of private banking is irresistible – so it seems for Bei Zhou, who’s just returned to the sector after nearly four years out. Zhou has joined Julius Baer as a Hong Kong-based director, focused on the hot sector of external asset managers (EAM), according to her LinkedIn profile. She had previously been with Wisdom Asset Management as a foreign exchange specialist since April 2018. Prior to that, Zhou was COO at Valoot Technologies, a Hong Kong fintech firm specialising in...

HSBC’s Hong Kong-based chief product officer for its flagship PayMe app, Deep Bedi, has joined Square, the fintech firm founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, which made revenues of $4.7bn in 2019. Bedi has moved to San Francisco, where Square is headquartered, and is a product manager on Cash App, its mobile payment service, according to his LinkedIn profile. Bedi will be missed at HSBC in Hong Kong. He joined as a senior digital product manager for PayMe in December 2016, shortly before its...

Technology professionals at banks are increasingly shunning jobs at small fintech startups in Singapore and Hong Kong, which they perceive as unstable employers during the Covid-19 crisis, say recruiters. But the larger, more established fintechs – from Ant Financial to Grab Financial – remain attractive as employers. “Fintechs that have been in the game a while, with demand still in place for their products, continue to grow and see this as an opportunity to attract some of the best talent...

If you’re an experienced employee in a stable job at a large bank in Singapore, spare a thought for others in the finance sector who may not be in such a fortunate position, in particular new graduates and staff in small fintech startups. While some banks have told us that they are not pulling back on analyst offers already made to last year’s intern classes, the additional graduate jobs that usually crop up as the year progresses are in danger of being curtailed in 2020. Meanwhile, fintech...