Over 800 jobs have been announced in Northern Ireland in the financial services and healthcare industries.
Citi, Northern Ireland's largest financial services employer, will hire more than 300 new employees, while Connected Health, an independent domiciliary care provider, will hire 500 new employees.
Citi, the only major investment bank with a presence in Belfast, employs over 3,200 employees across four locations and covers 21 different departments, including legal, HR, compliance, audit, markets, and technology.
The company has hired 1,000 new employees in the last year, and the vacancies offered this year range from apprentices and graduates to experienced employment.
"After launching our business in Belfast 16 years ago with 375 technology professionals, we are thrilled to be Northern Ireland's largest financial services employer with over 3,200 colleagues," said James Bardrick, head of Citi UK.
“We have been able to grow rapidly due to the incredibly deep and broad pool of talent present in Northern Ireland. A key feature of life at Citi is giving our people the opportunity to live locally but work globally, supporting our businesses around the world. We are looking forward to continuing our investment at Citi Belfast and developing our team locally.”
Leigh Meyer, site head of Citi in Belfast, said: “Every day in Belfast, our global teams interact with employees in over 100 countries processing over 600,000 transactions and supporting next-generation technology solutions for enterprise. They deliver critical services to the bank and its customers to make sure we are a stronger and safer organisation for our clients.”
Meanwhile, 500 new Connected Health positions will be paid at the London Real Living Wage rate of £11.05 per hour.
The minimum wage increase at Connected Health, according to the firm, is "a huge milestone for care workers in Northern Ireland," which has the greatest share of non-living wage jobs (21.3 percent) of all UK regions, with almost 236,000 positions paying less than the true Living Wage. For those above the age of 25, the current government minimum wage is £8.91 per hour.
Connected Health's head of clinical services and training, Theresa Morrison, said a new funding support package helped the homecare firm offer the higher rate.
She said: “Our hospitals are under severe pressure and increased homecare capacity in our communities provides a key solution to alleviating that pressure. As a sector, we need many more local carers working in their own communities and Connected Health is continuing to lead the drive to substantially increase staffing capacity in order to meet unprecedented and ever-growing demand.
“The Department of Health’s £23m support package to help the entire social care sector recruit and retain staff is playing a big part in our move to provide our hard-working teams with a fair wage.”
