The number of vacant in-house banking roles in London has decreased swiftly since last year, according to research by business intelligence company Vacancysoft and recruiter Laurence Simons.

Vacancysoft studies how many available legal jobs there are at a particular moment. In the first six months of 2015, there was an average of 36 legal roles available in London banks at any one time.

However, in the first half of 2016 that fell to 27 jobs.

The report concludes that the reason for the fall is that acquisition and real estate finance departments need fewer lawyers because of less "UK-centred transactions", partly due to worries over the Brexit vote.

The report states: "At the moment this is difficult to predict as there is a possibility of increased investment at the high end of the market from dollar-based economies looking to profit from an improved exchange rate, so the sector may very well weather the storm."

However, the decrease in London vacancies was not indicative of the whole country as the level of vacancies in regional banks has held steady.

While the average number of vacancies in London each month was down 22% year-on-year, the UK-wide volume of vacancies was down only 4.5%. The report states that this indicated the regional segment of the British banking sector is less dependent on European Union membership.

Vacancysoft also predicts that there is likely to be a significant increase in banking roles across Europe, as overseas banks repatriate jobs. This year has already seen the number of legal vacancies at banks in countries such as France, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany and Belgium beat the numbers for the entirety of 2015.

The report also states that a greater proportion of vacancies were outside London than in the previous year. In 2014, London jobs made up nearly 40% of the average number of vacancies a month, but this fell to just under 30% in the first six months of 2016. The report adds that this was linked to greater demand for lawyers to do more non-transactional work, which it says was allowing banks to slim down their London offices and expand regional ones.