The financial sector continues to recruit in 2020

The 2020 Salary Survey shows that the demand for internal auditors, accountants and controlling professionals in Belgium will remain high.

Els Van Der Veken, Associate Director at Robert Walters expects their salaries will increase further in 2020.

Looking back at 2019

In 2019, organisations were very active in recruiting accountants, internal auditors and controllers. Belgium experienced a strong economic growth, resulting in organisations having confidence in recruiting new team members. Specialists in finance were bombarded with interesting job offers. In 2020, this trend will increase even further, especially for specialists in controlling and auditing. The demand is so high that 82% of the professionals surveyed have complete confidence in career opportunities within their sector.

The demand for these professionals has been high for a number of years, especially for accountants. Organisations are increasingly looking for talent with a strong technical background and soft skills as a result of market developments and digitalisation. Internal auditors and support staff are also required to have good communication and interpersonal skills.

2020: a trend towards salary increases

At the same time, the survey reveals that several finance roles will benefit from a salary increase in 2020. In particular, financial controllers, sales controllers, senior accountants, accounting managers, internal auditors and treasury analysts will see their salary rising. Moreover, 17% of the respondents in this field expect their salary to increase by 17% in 2020.

This salary increase is due to the shortage of talent. Els: "There are more vacancies than candidates.... This puts these highly desired finance professionals in a strong position to negotiate their salary upwards."

Job satisfaction

This year's job satisfaction was also questioned in Robert Walters' salary survey. We note that, within finance, employees are overall very satisfied with their work. The most important factors contributing to this satisfaction are a competitive salary, an open and efficient management and a challenging job content.

Despite these factors of satisfaction, Robert Walters notes that 91% of respondents working in finance are open to a new job opportunity, even if they are not actively looking for a new job.

There are four factors that can drive these financial professionals to change jobs: a lack of career development (35%), the chance of a better compensation and benefits package (24%), an improved work-life balance (12%) and the possibility to change or improve responsibilities and tasks at work (11%).