Rioting and political turmoil usually turn off investors. But the unrest and upheaval in Northern Ireland this year have not stopped the flow of investment into Belfast by financial and professional services firms, with US banking giant Citigroup and local firm FinTru among the employers planning to add hundreds of jobs in the city.
Citi told the Financial Times it would hire 400 more Belfast staff over the next two years, taking its total headcount in the city to 3,600, almost 10 times the 375 jobs the bank created when it become one of the first big multinationals to plant a flag in the region in 2004.
FinTru, an eight-year-old start-up offering regulatory technology to global investment banks, will double its Northern Ireland headcount to 1,600 in the next five years, spread between Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, according to founder, chief executive and Irishman Darragh McCarthy.
Citi and FinTru’s plans follow recent announcements by Big Four accounting firms PwC, Deloitte and KPMG, who together will create 2,200 Belfast jobs over the next five years, a significant boost for Northern Ireland’s 43,000-strong professional and financial services sector.
“There’s lots of uncertainty here, there’s lots of uncertainty in the US, there’s lots of uncertainty in London . . . It hasn’t slowed us down to date,” said James Bardrick, Citi’s UK, Jersey and Israel boss, on a tour of the Belfast office.
Multinationals with deep pockets and big hiring plans are particularly welcome in Northern Ireland, where prosperity has lagged the rest of the UK, as the region struggled even after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended three decades of sectarian conflict. This year has been especially turbulent, as the fallout from Brexit triggered the worst riots the region had seen in years and led to its biggest political party losing two leaders in a matter of weeks.
“It’s hugely important we have those,” said Gordon Lyons, Northern Ireland’s economy minister, of the big global financial and professional services firms. “That sends a really good message that Northern Ireland is a place to invest, not only for smaller companies . . . but right through to larger multinationals as well.”
Cost is an obvious draw, with prime rents in Belfast running at less than a quarter of those in London’s West End and less than half of Dublin, 100 miles south, according to data from estate agency CBRE.
Staff are cheaper too; McCarthy said salary expectations were about 25 per cent lower in Belfast than in Dublin when he was deciding where to locate FinTru. InvestNI, Northern Ireland’s inward investment agency, also has generous support schemes: PwC received £9.8m from the agency to support 108 of the almost 800 jobs it will create by 2026.
A more subtle advantage is the potential to mould your own talent pool. Citi has spent years working with universities to deliver the staff it wants. It has also been going into schools to encourage students to explore a broad range of financial services careers.
Citi has leveraged that to expand its Belfast operations to 21 different areas, led by technology, employing 1,060 staff. “The universities continue to turn out very good quantities of good quality people, and there are more people discovering . . . Belfast as a location [to work],” said Bardrick.
Meanwhile, 280 people are currently on Deloitte’s apprenticeship programme with Ulster University, which allows them to work for the consultant four days a week and study for degrees on the fifth.
“We have one of the youngest populations across Europe here. It’s a brilliant starting point,” said Jackie Henry, Deloitte’s lead partner for Northern Ireland.
Her firm already has 1,000 people in Belfast and plans to double that by 2025 as it invests in areas including data analytics, cloud, robotics and cyber security. Henry, a 32-year Deloitte veteran who studied accounting at Queens University Belfast, also chairs the regional government’s skills advisory working group.
Fintechs have been enjoying the talent pool as well, with Belfast listed as the world’s third biggest fintech centre for the future in 2019 research by fDI intelligence. “It’s very clear that there are certain sectors here in Northern Ireland that we are particularly good at,” said Lyons.
Another factor in Belfast’s favour is its popularity with workers. Leigh Meyer, the Zimbabwean who has run Citi’s Belfast operation since its inception, said six of the 14 staff who came over on a two-year trial basis were still there.
Good sized detached houses within five miles of central Belfast can cost less than a third of something similar in London.
There are some headwinds though. McCarthy, whose Irishness made him only consider locations on the island of Ireland for FinTru’s base, said the cost advantage of Northern Ireland’s capital was fading as more companies pile in and compete for staff. He has already opened an office in Londonderry with 210 people as a hedge.
“When you look at the companies we do have in Belfast . . . they’re all expanding,” said Jessica McGeehan, of recruitment firm Michael Page. “PwC has recently announced a big tech centre, Belfast is not a place where we would have 800 very qualified people ready to step into those jobs.”
While not serious enough to prevent firms from doing business in Belfast, April’s riots were a concern. “We’re trying to sell our services to some of the biggest investment banks in the world and any negative headlines associated with Northern Ireland don’t help our brand,” said McCarthy. Henry said the unrest was “an issue that comes up here. Uncertainty is not welcome.”
However, the tensions over Brexit and Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, which led to the riots, could prove the lever for Belfast’s next act. Michael Hall, managing partner at EY’s 600-strong Northern Ireland business, argued that the post-Brexit trading arrangements set out in the Northern Ireland protocol could ultimately create “the best of both worlds” by making Belfast a unique jurisdiction with a toe in both the UK and the EU.
“If we can just get this clarity around the protocol and get a bit of stability, then I think we’re going to see lots of investments and increasing scale of jobs,” he added.
