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Summer Recruits for the Central Bank

08.04.2013 21:14 / Vedomosti

Following FFMS merger with the Central Bank, and until 1 January 2015, FFMS employees will receive average Bank of Russia salaries, said Deputy Head of the Central Bank Sergey Shvetsov. “We have yet to discuss this to pass the final decision”, he added.

Shvetsov said that the initial phase of the megaregulator process precedes the actual merger. It is expected that on 1 August 2013, FFMS will be liquidated and its staff will be transferred to the Central Bank. Phase two will last until 1 January 2015, with FFMS functioning within the CB as a separate division, and in phase three the service will merge with the Bank of Russia headquarters.

FFMS wants both the FFMS and the CB staff to be treated equally, said FFMS Head Dmitry Pankin: “There shall be no second-rate employees at the CB, the conditions must remain the same for everybody”.

According to the CB, the average 2011 salary was RUB 86,568 per month versus RUB 62,302 at FFMS (Rosstat data). Inside sources told Vedomosti that the salary gap is much wider.

“We are not complaining, we make do with whatever funds and human resources we have”, Deputy Head of FFMS Alexander Sinenko said as quoted by Interfax last autumn. He also stated that FFMS headcount, including Insurance Oversight, is some 1500 for the entire country, with support staff accounting for 30% of this number, leaving “a thousand-strong army to serve the whole nation”, reported the news agency.

Local FFMS divisions pay staff up to RUB 15,000 — including bonuses, commented Pankin on Friday. This salary is hardly enough for a qualified specialist, especially in high-skill jobs like insider trading investigation, he complained.

It seems that Pankin has succeeded in improving job conditions for his staff. “The Bank of Russia financial markets service payroll is to meet the minimum level set by the Bank of Russia for local offices”, the CB proposed in February. This idea was part of the plan at the earliest stages, but is considered no longer, said Shvetsov.

Sources close to the debate quote Central Bank arguments as follows: during phase one, the service becomes a department, therefore salaries can not be on par with the headquarters. The more plausible solution today is to refrain from total dissolution of FFMS in the CB, says a source.

FFMS merger could pose a problem for its employees: they are transferred to the CB under employment contracts in early summer, and will not be entitled to summer vacations, said Shvetsov. “We all realize that the entire service can not be stripped of their vacations, that employees have plans, they have small children, so we are trying our best to find a way out of this”, he reassured. For instance, contract dates could be moved forward, he suggests.

Galina Kamneva, Margarita Papchenkova

Financial markets megaregulatorProject Group №1