“The reason why we are here talking about how to attract talent to Luxembourg is of itself good news,” Nicolas Mackel told his audience at Thursday morning’s Delano Breakfast Talk. The CEO of Luxembourg for Finance was keen to get feedback from HR and executive recruitment experts on what his institution could do to help them attract talent and to understand what profiles are needed and what the government could do on a number of issues ranging from international schooling to the grand duchy’s image and bureaucracy surrounding immigration.

He explained the dilemma faced by Luxembourg for Finance, one of whose main tasks is to develop new markets--both geographical and sectorial--for the grand duchy’s financial services industry.  “It doesn’t make sense to bring as many financial players to Luxembourg as possible if then they have problems finding the talents they need,” said Mackel. “So obviously this is part of what we are looking at with our stakeholders, particularly the government.”

Even so, last year 80 new licences were granted to financial services institutions and 47 relocations have happened due to Brexit over 3 years. Mackel thinks his estimate of 3,000 new jobs created due to Brexit over a two-year period ending in December 2019 is “not so far off the mark”.

Regulatory pressure following the financial crisis has played a role in changing the nature of recruitment in the financial services industry. “Not only do we need more risk and compliance officers, but they have to be so much more specialised in what they do,” said Mackel. But what Luxembourg remains good at, Mackel argues, is that once it has understood an issue it is flexible enough to address it in a responsive way.

Delano Breakfast Talk is a new bi-monthly series of events aimed at professionals in a specific sector at which an expert delivers a short presentation that opens up an informal but informative discussion. The next talk is on 21 March.