Financial sector hardest hit due to its heavy reliance on Cobol programming language

Hong Kong's financial-services sector, distressed by a lack of Cobol (Common Business-Oriented Language) software programmers, will face an even tighter supply next year.

Industry officials pegged the banking sector's requirement at about 1,000 programmers. However, demand from other financial-services providers, such as insurance companies, and the local market's need for more Internet-based financial applications make that estimate conservative.

'There is more shortage of [Cobol software] programmers in Hong Kong than in any part of the world,' said Coley Clark, senior vice-president at multinational information technology services provider EDS.

Worldwide, there are an estimated 1.5 million available programmers for Cobol application work. Industry officials said these people were coveted by large global enterprises in areas such as finance and transport.

As the Hong Kong economy relies more on services-related industries, banks have looked to beef up their programming workforce to stay competitive amid market deregulation.

The city's financial-services sector was among the early adopters of mainframe computers that used Cobol for payroll, accounting and other industry applications. Industry officials also attributed the high local demand for such programmers to the financial sector's growing use of Web-enabled programs and modern business analysis tools, which required banks to tap into their vast collection of data stored in Cobol systems.