An upbeat assessment of regional financial services employment prospects in the Asia-Pacific region from professional services recruiter Morgan McKinley points unwittingly to medium-term pay cuts.
The firm started its report, predictably, overly rose-coloured and citing a 51 per cent year-on-year rise in job vacancies, as measured by its own Asia Pacific Employment monitor - comparing Q4 2014 to Q4 2013.
However, the firm's APAC employment monitor for Q4 2014 also indicated that "the number of professionals seeking new opportunities was down 19 per cent quarter-on-quarter", which the firm attributed to "seasonal factors that saw professionals delay moving roles and hiring managers postponed."
"In general, hiring activity continues to reflect economic growth and prosperity, even if in a number of Asia Pacific countries, the actual rate of growth has slowed somewhat," Morgan McKinley suggested, adding that the number of professionals in the region's financial sector looking to change jobs had increased by 16 per cent, year-on-year.
The firm also pointed to another consultants' report, the survey-based "Global Talent 2021" from Oxford Economics, which forecast: "a global recalibration of talent, with growth in emerging Asia for financial services professionals estimated at 21 per cent over the next five years."
Digging into the rich seams of management speak that run through that particular report, there is a clearly defined trend towards use of cheaper skilled labour, characterised as a "growth in the college-educated talent pool" of the largest emerging economies (the so-called E7: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and Turkey), compared to the largest economies in the industrialised world (the G7: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and US).
What isn't addressed - although it's scheduled to kick into action over the same five-year time scale - is the practical application of cloud-based artificial intelligence. This is likely to have noticeable effects on bank sector employment prospects, especially for entry level jobs, by 2020.
For instance,
The Guardian reports on a recent presentation by the French company Aldebaran Robotics, owned by large Japanese telco SoftBank, where the firms' leaders asserted that, among other advances, some of their robots would become "employees" of Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group from April.
The robots in question are 58-centimetre-tall humanoids. One prototype, named Nao, is programmed to speak 19 languages and, with the help of a camera on his forehead, is able to analyse customers' emotions from their facial expressions and tone of voice, enabling him to greet customers and ask which services they need.
Depending on his performance, more robots could appear at other branches in the coming months. Mitsubishi UFJ is one of several Japanese firms that are investing in "non-human resources".