Job advertisements for financial compliance roles in Singapore have surged - highlighting the regulatory-driven demand for such positions.

In findings that will come as little surprise as regulations continue to bite, data shows that advertising volumes for compliance-focused financial sector jobs in Singapore surged by 30 per cent in the first three months of this year from a year ago.

The data come from Robert Walters, the international recruitment consultancy, which published its 2015 Asia Job Index for the first quarter yesterday. Other markets covered by the index include China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. All these markets showed varying increases for financial and IT jobs overall.

The rise in compliance advertisements in Singapore comes at a time when organisations such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore continue to tighten rules applying to issues such as money laundering.

“Recruitment in Singapore is largely driven by competition in the candidate-short market, hence key challenges generally lie in attracting the best talent for the right positions. To address this, the employment market has evolved to focus heavily on talent development and retention," Toby Fowlston, managing director, Robert Walters Southeast Asia, said. 

"Companies prioritise Singaporean professionals when hiring and that emphasis will continue throughout the year. Only when all channels of recruiting domestic talent have been exhausted do hiring managers expand their search to foreign candidates. Despite offshoring within the foreign investment banking industry in the last six months, financial services still remains a major part of the Singapore economy and we look forward to a more buoyant sector in the year ahead,” he added.

Positions in anti-money laundering and financial crime are particularly in demand in the Singapore market, the report said.

Overall job advertising volumes rose 0.4 per cent in Singapore, Robert Walters said. Accounting and finance job ads rose 18 per cent; IT jobs rose 18 per cent.

In Hong Kong, job ads rose 2 per cent; in China, volumes rose 16 per cent; in South Korea, the volumes rose 14 per cent. Japan, meanwhile, was the country with the biggest rise, at 33 per cent.