When I started working in financial services in 2000, what shocked me was just how diverse the traders were. There were some people from rich families, some working class (I particularly remember one who had previously been running a market stall).
Turns out that capital markets have a great metric for ranking people without discrimination: how much profit they can make by managing their risk.
Ironically, the worst places I've seen for discrimination is in the public sector. They seem to see it as a virtue to promote people of their favoured race or sex/gender.
That's what happens. Almost all transactions are Straight Through Processed. It's only when things go wrong (or very exceptional cases) that a human gets involved.
The banks can't afford for humans to be involved in too many transactions.
Because with transactions things have to match and sometimes data errors happen.
Take something really simple like a bank cash transfer. Do you really think that no one ever accidentally puts in a typo in an account number or an amount?
If that happens then the transaction either fails or doesn't do as desired. Either way someone has to manually resolve it.
Take that and put it on steroids for securities transactions.
I once lived and worked in the US. To my surprise (as a Brit), each year we had a public holiday from work but where my kids still went to school and many other places were still open.
As is common with EU rules, this rule had serious side effects.
All that happened is that total pay stayed about the same, just that a greater fraction was salary.
Before, if times were tough, then the banks could significantly cut overall costs by cutting bonuses. With these rules their hands were tied - they still had to pay the higher salaries.
The European Commission has veto power over the European Parliament, so I'm afraid it can just force it through.
Doesn't normally come to that - there's enough corruption and alternative ways to pressurise the MEPs.
Turns out that capital markets have a great metric for ranking people without discrimination: how much profit they can make by managing their risk.
Ironically, the worst places I've seen for discrimination is in the public sector. They seem to see it as a virtue to promote people of their favoured race or sex/gender.