605 new financial services roles in Derry in Belfast will be filled over the next five years.
Chief executive of Invest Northern Ireland (NI), Alastair Hamilton, today (26 June) announced that financial services firm FinTrU will recruit 605 new employees over the next five years.
The significant expansion will see FinTrU take on 305 employees at a new operation in Derry and create an additional 300 roles in Belfast.
Hamilton stated that the development was “a great endorsement [for] the wealth of talent in the north-west”.
He added: “This investment will also make a significant contribution to Northern Ireland’s flourishing financial services sector and will deliver a projected £20m in additional new export sales for the company.”
FinTrU provides regulatory resourcing services – including legal, risk, compliance, operations and consultancy – to investment banks and other financial institutions.
The new jobs will generate more than £15m in additional salaries for the local economy. Invest NI has offered the company £3.2m worth of support for the new jobs and the Department of Economy has offered £2.4m through its Assured Skills Programme.
The Assured Skills Programme provides pre-employment training programmes to companies hoping to recruit a skilled workforce in Northern Ireland. Some of FinTrU’s current staff are graduates of the programme (175 to be exact). It is expected that 500 of the 605 new jobs announced will be delivered through “a series of future Assured Skills academies”, according to permanent secretary at the Department of Economy, Noel Lavery.
Darragh McCarthy, FinTrU founder and CEO, said: “Our current operation in Belfast has been hugely successful which has been driven by the exceptional talent we have been able to recruit in Northern Ireland.
“After reviewing a number of locations, I had no hesitation about expanding our presence into the north-west due to the highly attractive location and the availability of talent that the region offers. Whilst managed as a profit-driven organisation, I see FinTrU as having a social purpose to create high-quality professional employment in Northern Ireland.”
McCarthy lauded the company’s longstanding partnership with NI as “invaluable” to its growth, while Hamilton expressed that Invest NI was “delighted” to play a role in FinTrU’s significant expansion to date.
FinTrU first established its Belfast centre of excellence in 2014, with initial plans to recruit 80 staff. It has since tripled its headcount to 240, with this news seeing the Belfast centre expand even further.
