These regulatory jobs in financial services and investment banks can be divided into various categories, including:

Sales and trading compliance - working with a bank's salespeople and traders to ensure their activities comply with the requirements of the local regulator. Sales and trading compliance pros are often product specialists - for example, they might specialise in bonds, equities or derivatives.

Control room compliance - centralised tasks such as maintaining the bank's restricted list (which restricts confidential information to key individuals), ensuring Chinese Walls are upheld and checking for abnormal or alarming dealing activity. Should certain staff be placed on 'stop and watch' lists, it's the control room compliance team who ensure they're stopped - and watched.

Monitoring and surveillance - scrutinising specific behaviour and trading transactions that might indicate fraudulent activity, such as insider dealing or manipulation of markets across the exchanges.

Anti-money laundering (AML) - stopping money laundering (where the financial proceeds of illegal activities are given the appearance of being legitimate).

Asset managers and hedge funds also recruit compliance staff, as do retail banks and insurance companies. In the wake of the global financial crisis, regulation of financial services firms has increased and compliance has become increasingly important. As well as containing jobs for compliance officers, compliance managers and senior compliance professionals from compliance recruitment agencies in the areas referred to above, this section also includes jobs at financial services regulatory bodies such as the FSA (in the UK) and the SEC (in the US). Regulatory jobs frequently revolve around the enforcement of such regulations.

Alongside compliance staff, banks and financial services firms employ an army of lawyers or attorneys and paralegals to ensure the documentation and contracts associated with their business fall within the law. This section also includes these legal jobs within financial services.