In the world of compliance recruitment in the UK, business has not ground to a halt and this month's situation is still similar to that in April. Financial firms are hiring more contractors (as opposed to permanent people) for "business-critical" jobs. There is also a trend towards smaller firms preferring to hire contractors in all jobs.

This is because they cannot meet people in order to interview them face-to-face and this is making them nervous, especially when they are looking for senior appointments. They are basically looking for people to see them through the coverage period.

Interviews rely on Zoom calls and these are different for all firms. There are often technical problems, so my recruitment firm has had to organised telephone interviews instead of Zoom interviews in order to get around this problem - indeed, we have probably had to do this for 40-50% of our contract calls. Financial firms have found themselves falling back on "voice call" because either the candidates could not find their Zoom calls in the first place or because of delays. Moreover, Zoom calls are not like face-to-face meetings because people's screens often seize up for a second and the delay that this causes prevents them from reading each others' micro-expressions - a necessary part of gauging someone's character in the flesh. More generally, most people also find it harder to strike up a rapport with others on the telephone.

Furlough - the rules of which the Chancellor changed recently - might lead to firms making pockets of redundancies because there is going to be a cost shift. In other words, when August begins employers must pay National Insurance and pension contributions, then 10% of pay when September begins, rising to 20% in October. Staff will also be allowed to return to work part-time (they are banned from working at the moment) in July, but with companies paying 100% of their wages for the days on which they work.

The cost of this will eventually fall on the client. It might not be so bad for the large firms, because they have spent the last few years 'offshoring' and 'near-shoring' plenty of jobs to facilities in India, Malaysia and other locations. I am not sure whether people are 'on lockdown' in Bengaluru, but they are unlikely to be receiving such generous government subsidies there and any withdrawal of such subsidies is unlikely to be measurable. During the period of the virus, compliance functions have still been heading over there, especially those that perform duties relating to surveillance. They always keep their key senior people here in London, however.

Last week David Symes said that in normal times the regulator might object to a bank allowing its compliance headcount to drop by 20% or even 10%, quoting its responsibility to ensure that banks have adequate staff. It might do, but I am not so sure that this is a problem. The effectiveness of an operation depends on the strength of people in one's compliance department. One department containing 50 people could perform as well as another with 100 - I have seen that myself when banks have hired en masse, often for large-scale KYC (know-your-customer) projects. It is therefore possible to clear out people and still work at a high level because you will always get people with different work ethics.

As far as I can see, volume has increased slightly since the beginning of lockdown. When we go back to normal, we are going to see it pick up but it will not return to the same levels all of a sudden. Firms may have phased approaches, staggering returns to work at different times. Meanwhile, compliance recruitment is still happening all over Europe.

It is certainly the case that firms have to keep hiring during crises whenever people who fulfil vital, compulsory functions (such as money-laundering-reporting officers or MLROs) retire or leave, but not too many senior people have retired during the last two months, so the picture is not a clear one. If a firm loses a person to resignation (most people with registered functions have to give three months' notice) or retirement at the moment, it is probable that it will start the recruitment process now, beginning with telephone/Zoom interviews within a month, and then draw up a shortlist.

Finally, the virus has had little discernable effect on training, because most of it occurs online.

* Caleb Hawkins can be reached at chawkins@morganmckinley.com