Sixty-one per cent of HR directors working within the financial services industry describe their organisations as failing to develop key talent.

TalentMax interviewed HR directors from 56 financial services organisations for the survey.

The news comes despite almost half of respondents admitting to having a talent management programme in place with others planning to do so.

Clear links between talent and business performance were recognised with 88% of respondents believing talent to be a contributory factor in the success of the organisation.

While retention was found to be a key cause of concern with just 18% of firms able to describe themselves as very successful at retaining top recruits.

Susannah Pringle of TalentMax said: “There is rising awareness that money is a blunt tool for recruitment and retention that can too easily be beaten by competitors eager to lure talent away. Few firms are confident that they are genuinely engaging and motivating their talented executives.

“Career development will become a very serious issue for financial services organisations as the still benign recruitment climate of cherry-picking redundant executives is replaced by bitter talent bidding wars as the economy picks up.”

The following areas were cited as the main areas for development:

1. Giving line managers the skills and tools to manage, engage and develop talent
2. Designing flexible career development frameworks
3. Creating pools of multi-skilled executives to fill the leadership pipeline
4. Developing tailored development and retention plans
5. Accelerating the value contribution rate of new employees
6. Making talent an organisation-wide rather than team/unit-hoarded resource