Salaries for banks’ risk and compliance officers in Singapore and Hong Kong rose at about twice the pace of pay for similar positions at New York and London firms amid a shortage of skilled staff members, a recruiter said.

Pay excluding bonuses for people who changed jobs in the Asian cities rose as much as 20 percent this year, compared with 10 percent in the Western hubs, said Neil Owen, a director for Robert Half International Inc. in London. A senior official in Singapore is paid as much as S$250,000 ($201,000) annually, compared with Hong Kong’s HK$1.8 million ($232,000), London’s 175,750 pounds ($282,000) and New York’s $323,595, data compiled by the firm show.

The faster wage gains reflect the smaller pool of experienced professionals available in the Asian cities, Owen said. It also underscores the rise in demand for such skills as policy makers globally tighten regulations on banks’ capital buffers and crack down on offenses from money laundering to rigging of interest rates. Pay for risk and compliance officers rose more than for other finance jobs in 2013, Owen said.

“The compliance team in a large bank consisted of a handful of people before the financial crisis,” Owen, who is the global financial services practice director, said in a Nov. 6 telephone interview. “There’s been such a significant increase in the types of functions that are required, there’s been so much change coming down from the regulators, the types of processes that need to be implemented.”

Banks and regulators have clashed over the severity of capital, indebtedness and liquidity rules that were set out in 2010 as part of an overhaul of the banking industry to avoid a repeat of the 2008 global financial crisis. The credit crunch that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. caused at least $2 trillion in losses globally.

More regulations are in the pipeline, with the U.S. putting final touches on the Volcker rules that would curtail proprietary trading and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision drafting more guidelines to curb risk taking.

The biggest banks ― including HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. ― have also been told to tighten oversight after regulators were angered by lapses in internal controls on issues such as money laundering, terrorism funding and the manipulation of benchmark rates and currency markets.

HSBC reached a $1.9 billion settlement with regulators in December over claims that lax oversight by top executives gave terrorists and drug cartels access to the U.S. financial system. The bank has increased its compliance staff by 46 percent this year to 4,894 people, according to Gareth Hewett, a spokesman for the bank in Hong Kong. (Bloomberg)