In this article Compliance Matters interviews an expert in permanent compliance employment in the City of London. Among other things, he calculates the amount of a compliance officer's salary that the typical recruiter charges the hiring manager.

Recruitment, despite the tough economic circumstances of lockdown, has not ground to a halt. One London compliance recruiter told Compliance Matters: "It was relatively quiet over the previous two weeks as people settled down into the new way of life. During the middle-to-tail of last week, though, it picked up. Many recruiters have been dismissed because of cash-flow problems at recruitment firms. I'm on furlough - usually I do nothing, but people on furlough can still work in some lines of business but can't do fee-generating work, so if they want to do something they build market maps and do things like that. Furlough is there to stop redundancies because it reduces the cash-flow cost."

"There are signs of recovery in the compliance recruitment market elsewhere in the world. We've seen a major bounce-back in China and Hong Kong. I imagine that it's quite similar in Singapore, although I don't know if it is."

The following interview is with a different recruiter - Ben Harris of Morgan McKinley (pictured), who looks after permanent appointments. It is in the form of a question-and-answer session.

Q: How does one build up momentum in one's compliance career?

A: Online courses are very good at helping to build up your career. LinkedIn is the place where they find the next generation of compliance officers, so the first thing that you ought to get is that LinkedIn profile. Use it to tell people as much as you can about your achievements and what you want to do in your career. Social media, too, is the way of the world. Then there is always word of mouth, which is always a very good means of promotion.

Recruiters still have a massive role, so you ought to get a couple of them on your side. The selling point of recruiters is that they are good at finding opportunities and brokering them. They really do have the ear of hiring managers (i.e. line managers) and human resources people at financial institutions. They are always keeping an eye out on the market and looking at what firms want to hire. They know all the gossip and they (unlike you) can look at your career dispassionately.

You should be relying on all these things rather than just a CV landing on someone's desk.

Q: How much of a compliance officer's salary goes to the recruiter who brokered his appointment?

A: It varies. It depends on the seniority of the job and other factors. If it's a very senior job at a large bank, the recruiters get 25+%, or maybe something in the 30s. If it's a junior job, the industry standard is 20%. For a senior appointment at a medium-range firm, it's 20-25%.

Some well-known banks have run their compliance and risk departments together in the decade since the crash of 2008. In risk, the recruiter probably takes about 22-23% of a junior compliance man's salary and 25-30% of a senior man's. Operational risk and compliance fit quite nicely together. I often see compliance officers getting jobs at private banks in a trading capacity. They know about trading compliance.

Q: How do compliance officers and MLROs differ personality-wise, if at all?

A: I think they do differ. MLROs tend to have a more investigative bent. They come out of the National Crime Agency or the fraud squad or the police, whereas compliance officers start life as traders or lawyers. Lawyers tend to go for regulatory compliance rather than becoming MLROs. It is not unheard of for them to become MLROs but it is not common.

Q: Do you think that the dangers that MLROs face (i.e. their liabilities under the Proceeds of Crime Act) make them different from compliance officers as well as their backgrounds?

A: I think so. Candidates for the job of MLRO want to be number 2 at the firm and not number 1. In fact, they often want to be the AML director - this is more popular than the MLRO position, in fact it's our bread and butter.

It is a massive responsibility being an MLRO, although I haven't yet seen an MLRO get thrown to the wolves.