The slumping stock market leaves brokerages struggling to pay high-class personnel including market analysts and financial experts with high salary.
A broker earns an average payment of around VND4-5 million (US$200) per month, a director of a HCMC-based brokerage said, adding some brokerages pay low salary with high commission to encourage their brokers to work harder.
A new graduate now working as a broker at a brokerage in HCMC, only identified as L., said his monthly salary was too low for extra personal meetings to win more clients.
“My colleagues make enough money for living even in bearish time as they have a lot of clients,” L. said.
Some brokers agree to work with low payment as they are offered rights to buy shares with special prices.
An experienced broker, who asked not to be named, said she turned down a securities firm’s offering with higher salary as the current brokerage sold her shares in profitable companies with preferential prices.
“Brokerages are hunting talented candidates for the position of managing the market analysis department,” Nguyen Thanh Hung, general director of the Sacombank Securities JSC, said.
“However, a few are willing to take that job in spite of the high salary of more than VND20 million per month. The market research and analysis department is mainly criticized for their wrong predicts when the market is volatile,”
Similarly, a big brokerage paid $2,000 for the position of market analyst and financial experts. The firm’s market reports were considered as the best at that time, with detailed information and good analysis on listed companies’ business activities.
However, the firm then incurred huge losses from the market research and analysis department, which offered reports for free. Therefore, they eventually had to chop down the salary level to less than VND10 million.
“Brokerages are very picky in recruiting brokers these days. At the outset, they recruited around 10 brokers. But then just a few of them, who proved their competence, will stay as the brokerages will take over clients of the remainders before throwing away,” a veteran broker disclosed.
Some other securities firms offered big payment to brokers holding a large amount of clients, asking them to make a monthly or quarterly fixed revenue in return.
A brokerage, which is one of the country’s 10 biggest securities firms, recruited a large number of brokers early this year, but it had to cut nearly half of the amount in the middle of the year due to the slumping market and the high employee cost.
“We tried to recruit part-time employees for our provincial branches in an attempt to cut operational costs. But just a few were willing to join as they want full-time jobs with stable payment,” he said.
“Good directors can make proper recruitment plans as they are good at analyzing the market. Common ones usually have to deal with either an abundant number of brokers in a bullish market or a shortage of employees in bearish market,” Pham Linh, general director of the Hanoi-based VISecurities JSC, noticed.
