More major financial players are slashing IT contractor rates nearly every week, and those that don’t announce across-the-board cuts are quietly reducing pay.

Headhunters tell us that Credit Suisse has now chopped rates and Aviva – which includes Norwich Union and Morley Fund Management – is imminently going to shrink the pay of its IT contractors by 10%.

Contractors working for HBOS, the beleaguered Scottish bank, also received an e-mail informing them: “Effective from midnight on Sunday, 10 August, all contractor rates are cut by 10%.”

The cuts come hot on the heels of reductions at Barclays, which admitted it had cut rates by 10% in its retail units following BarCap’s decision to do the same in May.

Add these to: Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Nomura International and RBS and the 10% cut is fast becoming standard.

Barclays reckons it was paying over the odds for its contractors and by enforcing the cut, it was “bringing them in-line with market rates”.

Simon Walker, director at recruiters Project Partners, says: “Even though a lot of banks have yet to impose the rate reduction, any new job opportunities are being offered at a lower rate of pay, which usually equates to 10% anyway.”

And are contractors walking away from the banks in the wake of a pay cut? Walker thinks not: “The problem is that many banks have contractor workforces of 500+, so when the cuts are imposed they might start looking, but with such a flood of them to the market there aren’t nearly enough opportunities.”