Chief Executive '˜excited' about Derry expansion

L-R Alastair Hamilton, Invest NI, Richard McGuinness, FinTrU, Katrien Roppe, FinTrU and Darragh McCarthy, FinTrU (Photo by Darren Kidd, PressEye)

Darragh McCarthy, CEO of financial services firm FinTrU, told the ‘Journal’ that the average salary for the new posts is likely to be in the region of £25,000 per year, varying dependant on experience.

Mr McCarthy confirmed that the firm’s north west base will be located in the city centre and that a premises had been identified with a lease expected to be signed soon.

Invest NI announced FinTrU’s plans to expand into Derry on Tuesday, with 305 graduate and professional jobs coming to the city and 300 more being created in Belfast over the next five years as part of a £38m expansion.

Most of the local jobs will be channelled through a special Academy programme to be run at the North West Regional College in partnership with Ulster University, and Mr McCarthy confirmed that an information evening for prospective applicants will be held next Tuesday at the Millennium Forum from 5pm to 7.30pm.

He said: “We are very excited about it. The plan is the to have this North West Academy information evening and. hopefully, have the successful applicants and graduates enrolled on that and then in the seats of our office by October at the latest. We will also probably relocate some of our current staff from Belfast to the North West who are maybe from that region to bring some experienced people there.”

Mr McCarthy said that, initially, there will be around 20 recruits in this first Academy. By the New Year the firm hope to have 50 people in place in Derry, with an accelerate recruitment programme with around three academies a year over the coming years from 2019, along similar lines to expansion of its Belfast operations, which currently employ around 250 people.

Mr. McCarthy said that he had no doubt the North West was the right place to invest in, given the talent here, adding that part of the company’s ethos was to ensure it was not solely profit-driven but “has a social purpose.”

“The North West is the logical expansion point,” he said. “ We are totally convinced this is the right area to be in. I have been up several times and every time you get this an incredible welcome and people are incredibly open and supportive. We are very keen that we can contribute to an eco-system of general economic well being.”

Mr McCarthy said that the recruits to the academy do not need to have financial services experience. “We are, to a large degree, agnostic. We look for people with the right attitude, ambition with humility.”