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While investment banks are trimming back their IT budgets, wealth managers are only just starting to spend, and they’re eager to take on techies.

By the end of this year, European wealth managers will have spent $1.7bn on technology, according to IT consultancy Celent, a 14% increase on 2007.

David Thorne, director at SEI Global Private Banking, says the IT splurge is to cope with the wealth managers’ growing business levels.

“In the first instance, wealth managers need to plan for increased capacity. Then they need to offer top-notch systems to support their relationship managers as well as the platforms to assist in asset allocation and best execution, in addition to back-office functions,” he says.

Yves Amer, senior consultant at IT finance recruiters McGregor Boyall, says wealth management IT roles are currently less about development and more about strategy.

“They’re still using relatively archaic technologies,” he says. “Wealth managers are looking at long-term strategy and therefore the majority of positions are for business analysts, project managers and programme managers.”

The bad news, according to Darren Ball, senior consultant at recruiters McCabe and Barton, is that investment banking experience isn’t valued and could even be a disadvantage.

“In investment banks, you need to build real-time trading applications. The wealth management decision-making process is more long term. You couldn’t put a technologist on to the trading floor of an investment bank without business knowledge, but this is less important within a wealth manager.”

Project management roles within wealth management pay between £60k and £65k. A business analyst can expect to earn anywhere between £40k and £55k.