If there is one piece of advice above all others that this publication wishes to give to Asia-based compliance officers, it is this: keep moving jobs frequently - there is no surer way to a high salary.

Job advertising volumes for Singapore-based compliance and legal jobs skyrocketed by 64% in the final three months of 2014 from a year earlier, as regulatory pressures mounted on sectors such as wealth management, new figures show.

The Lion City was confronted with an 'acute talent crunch', resulting in a flurry of advertisements for human resources professionals, with ad volumes surging by 48% year-on-year, according to Robert Walters, the international recruitment firm, in one of its regular overviews of the Asian employment market.

The data would seem to confirm anecdotal evidence about a boom in compliance-related jobs and the salaries of such positions. As financial markets have been affected by a wave of regulatory action and scandals such as benchmark-rigging and money laundering, so demand for such positions has also surged.

Singapore is far ahead of the rest of Asia for such compliance and legal ad volume growth. Throughout the whole of Asia, the report said, advertising volume for jobs in legal and compliance functions rose by 10 per cent in the final three months of 2014 from the same period a year before. Accounting and finance job ad volumes rose 27 per cent in Asia, the firm said.

The Robert Walters Asia Job Index tracks job advertising volumes for professional positions across the leading job boards and national newspapers in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

In China, accounting and finance job ad volumes rose 26 per cent year-on-year. In Hong Kong, a rival wealth management hub to Singapore, such ads rose by a robust 43 per cent, the report added.