Financial services after the crash

The Lehman Brothers crash of 2008, which helped precipitate the crisis in the global banking sector, has had lasting ramifications across the industry and lead to a glut of changes in the UK's financial services as experts attempt to avoid further problems and steer the world's economy back to growth.

However, these reforms have not stopped yet, and many further regulatory shifts and paradigm alterations are to be expected in the coming years. While the sector appears to be in relatively good health, at least in Britain, practitioners are understandably chary of making any big predictions about the future of the sector.

For workers hoping to decide on their next career move or simply sticking their finger in the wind to gauge job creation prospects over the coming decade, an upcoming seminar at the London Business School could prove interesting - as could the green paper the institution is hoping to produce after the event.

The high-profile discussion is taking place at the school's finance department and will feature contributions from major luminaries such as Sir Win Bischoff, the chairman of Lloyd's Banking group, and Andy Haldane from the Bank of England.

Vikrant Vig, associate professor of finance at London Business School, cited Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in describing the lack of clarity predictions about the financial services sector tend to suffer from - somebody's been watching Breaking Bad.

"As soon as you throw light on a problem, the behaviour of the subject changes, making it hard to get a natural observation - as soon as you create a rule banks change their behaviour to game the system and you find yourself looking at a considerable challenge," he argued.

This means that predictive regulations can often find themselves outmoded or easily circumvented shortly after their implementation, explained the academic.

While it may be tempting to dismiss this kind of talk as ivory tower-ish abstraction, the reality is that the future of the sector is dependent on its ability to reform and change in line with ideas such as these.