The Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms form the biggest driver behind project-related job movements in the financial services sector, recruitment firm Profusion has said.

"I think FOFA is the one that seems to be getting the most attention because of the upcoming deadlines for 2012," Profusion senior consultant Steve Ash said.

"There was quite a big drive late last year; companies ramped up quite significantly before FOFA on the business side, including project managers and business analysts."

Regulatory projects had taken priority over most other business projects, Ash said.

"There are still discretionary projects which are receiving funding, but they are projects that are ongoing, as opposed to new discretionary projects," he said.

"Because of the downwards pressure on budgets at the moment it seems as if the regulatory program gets the highest priority of project spend across the industry."

A few companies had been attracting external staff towards the end of 2011, but cost pressures have also forced many firms to shift internal staff to regulatory projects.

"It is pretty quiet now; I think there is a focus on internal placement now," Ash said.

Financial services firms had allocated fewer resources to the regulatory reforms of Stronger Super, including Superstream and MySuper, Ash said.

"In terms of Superstream and MySuper, everyone is thinking about it at the moment and it is going to have a huge impact on the industry, so there will have to be a pretty significant IT build as a result of that," he said.

"But because FOFA is such a focus at the moment, that [resources] is kind of lost in just thinking about it."

He said he did not expect any resources or budgets to be allocated to these reforms until at least the third quarter of this year.

"They are doing the planning around it at the moment, but the actual business cases will only start in the third or fourth quarter of this year," he said.