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“The more investment hits the TV screens and the more pension fund trustees read about it, the more they want to know the impact.” So says a source at Aon Consulting, explaining increased demand for investment consultants for pension consulting in Scotland.

At HSBC Actuaries & Consultants, they tell us the firm’s expanding and they’re actively hiring, although not on a specific regional basis. They add that there’s currently “unprecedented” turnover of investment consultants among the major firms.

This is borne out by Anne Kershaw, senior investment consultant with Mercer, who tells us that its recent recruitment of Steven Blackie from Aon and Brian Henderson from Haymans Robertson brings Mercer’s Edinburgh office to full strength.

Top-level recruitment doesn’t appear to be translating into appetite for staff at more junior levels, however. Lower down the ranks, the message is that Scotland’s investment consultants are hiring “number crunchers”, “selectively”, and “when the right person comes along”.

Paul Deane-Williams, spokesman for Watson Wyatt, says hiring in the Scottish investment consulting market is muted: “From our perspective, this market is probably saturated as the large firms all have offices there already, for example Hewitt, Mercer, Aon and Watson Wyatt, and there do not appear to be any drivers that would increase demand. Indeed, it could be argued that it may be shrinking as a number of Scottish firms are being sold to foreign concerns.”