While the pandemic raged, the Hong Kong job market struggled as Singapore thrived. Hong Kong bankers rushed to relocate, and banks rushed to accommodate them. Three years later, the air has somewhat gone out of Singapore’s sails, while Hong Kong is having a new lease of life.

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“While the Singapore local job market remains healthy, we have seen a growing trend for companies starting to expand their presence from Singapore to neighbouring countries such as Malaysia in recent years,” says Loretta Chan, a managing director at Amethyst Partners, a Singapore-based asset management recruiter. Higher Singaporean labour costs and tight visa requirements are contributing to the shift, says Chan. Junior and mid-ranking jobs in the middle and back office have been most affected.

It’s not just Malaysia. Standard Chartered cut 80 jobs in Singapore last month as if offshores roles to India. Singaporean bank DBS currently has 32 vacancies for operations professionals in India, compared to just 27 in Singapore. Similarly, DBS is looking for 36 Indian product professionals and only 16 product professionals in its home market.

DBS’s job vacancies are taken from a point in time, but are indicative of a broader malaise in the Singapore market financial services job market. In a recent report, recruitment firm Kelly Consulting said hiring in Singapore is “cautious” and that “each new headcount is rigorously assessed to ensure it is critical.”

This will sound familiar to recruiters in London, but Singapore has additional structural issues. Having emerged in the past two decades as a key global hub for jobs in areas like risk and product control, Singapore now risks losing those jobs to artificial intelligence (AI). Earlier this year, DBS said it plans to cut 4,000 temporary jobs as uses AI to replace “project” roles.

The Singapore government appears cognisant of the challenge. In a speech last month, Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister, said Singapore is a global financial centre and key node for capital in Asia, but that it can’t rest on its laurels. Among other things, Kim Yong said the government is working with six banks to identify jobs that will be impacted by AI and that the banks will “take steps to upskill and reskill their employees.”

By comparison, Hong Kong isn’t immune to AI and offshoring, but having evolved as a key hub for front office activities like sales and trading, it’s less susceptible to the rush to automate support roles. It helps that China’s pouring money into the Hong Kong market. The Financial Times reports that capital flows from China to Hong Kong have already exceeded 2024’s total this year, and that this is driving Hong Kong stocks higher.

Hong Kong’s traders aren’t the only beneficiaries of rising stock prices. Banking jobs will benefit too. The FT notes that Hong Kong IPOs are at record highs. “You’ve got everyone coming all at once to the Hong Kong market,” Kenneth Chow, co-head of equity capital markets in Asia for Citigroup, said last month. “You’ve had this confluence of international and Asian investors reallocating money to the Hong Kong market.”

Times have changed.

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