Internal Audit – UK Finance Labour Market Trends Report, June 2024
Climate Change Spurs Expansion in UK Internal Audit Roles
Key findings include:
- Vacancies has slowed down by 19.7% compared to last year.
- Internal Audit vacancies have shown a downward trend, -19.7%.
- Greater London has seen a decline in vacancies by 15.1%
- Goldman Sachs maintains the highest number of vacancies
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With the impact of climate change now becoming an ever-present reality, it is now being recommended that internal auditors globally make assessing the risk part of their purview, and within the UK specifically.
Nonetheless, activity has been muted so far in 2024, with vacancies slowing down by 19.7% compared to last year. Looking at this year so far, there have been 174 internal audit vacancies published between January and May, compared to 520 last year. Broken down further, the divergence between London and the rest of England becomes clear. Looking at activity in the capital, vacancies have fallen by 15.1% compared to last year, whilst regionally, the drop has been 25.7%. This is according to the latest UK Finance Labour Market Trends report by Morgan McKinley and market data analysts Vacancysoft.
Declining Trend in Internal Audit Vacancies
Internal Audit vacancies have exhibited a clear downward trend over the past few years, following a peak in 2022. Since then, the number of vacancies has steadily declined, dropping by 42.5% from 2022 to 2023 (from 904 to 520 vacancies) and a further 19.7% year-to-date in 2024 (to 418 vacancies).
Consequently, the proportion of finance function vacancies attributed to internal audit has also decreased, falling from 16.3% in 2022 to 14% so far this year. Notably, this trend has become more pronounced in recent months, with record-low shares of total vacancies recorded between March and June (12.4%, 13.4%, and 12.3%, respectively).
London and Scotland Decline, South Sees Surge
Regional data confirms that Greater London maintains the highest number of job vacancies in the UK. However, from 2022 to 2024, Greater London experienced a downward trend, with vacancies decreasing by 49.5% in 2023 and a further 15.1% decline in 2024.
Scotland also faced a significant drop, with vacancies falling by 67.0% in 2023 and projected to decrease by another 5.5% year-to-date. Edinburgh, which had the largest city-specific decrease of 61.1% in 2023, has shown a slight recovery with an 11.4% increase in 2024.
Conversely, the South region has defied the trend, with vacancies rising by 46.7%. South East England saw a remarkable 140.0% increase, and the South West grew by 20.0%.
Ben Harris – Associate Director – Morgan McKinley comments:
“Areas we expect to see movement in the second half of 2024 include IT Audit, Analytics Audit, Cyber and Infrastructure Audit, and Financial Crime. There will be a greater focus on the delivery of plans, with some candidates moving into Compliance and leaving Audit.”
Goldman Sachs maintains the highest number of vacancies
In 2023, most of the top 20 banking companies experienced a decline in internal audit vacancies. However, in 2024, only 7 out of the top 20 companies reported a decrease. Goldman Sachs maintained the highest number of vacancies, with a 62.5% increase from 2022 to 2023 (rising from 24 to 39 vacancies) and a further 35.4% increase year-to-date, reaching 53 vacancies. Similarly, Evelyn Partners saw a notable 158.5% increase year-to-date after achieving a record £59.1bn in assets under management in 2023.
In contrast, Citi continued its downward trend with a 78.6% decrease in 2023, followed by another 42.4% decrease.
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