Customer Demands Push Banks to Upskill Technology Talent

Banking institutions will only meet their digital transformation goals by upskilling existing talent, calibrating roles with emerging skills and hiring for potential.

A new report from Eightfold AI, “How Banks Can Become Future Ready,” found that in order to tackle trends such as the increased use of AI and big data, the growing importance of cybersecurity, advancements in cloud computing and open-banking APIs, along with the rise of blockchain technology, banks need to quickly rethink their talent strategies.

While banks have made significant progress in meeting the digital demands of their customers, the industry continues to face challenges when establishing digital-first talent strategies, the report said. Only 15% of the top in-demand skills are currently being used within their IT workforces.

Inter-Industry Competition

Competing with FinTechs (and sometimes Big Tech companies) requires banking institutions to hire and build talent with a skills-based approach, such as:

• Upskill and reskill to help bridge the gap between rising and declining skills within every role. This requires a particular focus on equipping IT employees with rising skills such as Python, Docker, node.js and Machine Learning, the report said. Developing future-ready front and middle office employees will require a focus on rising skills such as digital sales, data analysis and business intelligence.
• Calibrate roles with future skills and consider recruiting emerging skills from outside the industry (e.g. Big Tech companies) to fulfill skill requirements.
• Adopt a “hiring for potential” mindset by analyzing who has potential to learn the most in-demand skills and whether they’re external or internal candidates, which further expands the organization’s qualified talent network.

Banks “are now competing with entire ecosystems of tech organizations for the same pool of talent,” observed Eightfold President Kamal AhluwaliaI. “Future-thinking institutions must scale their investments in talent in order to maintain their strategic advantage.”

To develop the report, Eightfold leveraged its global dataset and considered publicly available profiles from major banking corporations, as well as FinTech companies for benchmarking purposes. The company analyzed approximately 700,000 publicly available profiles from top banks, and benchmarked those findings against approximately 25,000 publicly available FinTech profiles.

Image: iStock

By Mark Feffer

Mark Feffer is executive editor of RecruitingDaily and the HCM Technology Report. He’s written for TechTarget, HR Magazine, SHRM, Dice Insights, TLNT.com and TalentCulture, as well as Dow Jones, Bloomberg and Staffing Industry Analysts. He likes schnauzers, sailing and Kentucky-distilled beverages.