Are banks future-ready yet?

The demand for skills in sectors like banking and finance is evolving in response to the impact of digital transformation. Banking industry employs highly skilled people with specialized education qualification for most of its functions.

However, over the last few years there has been an increasing trend to outsource recruitment and training needs of private sector banks to specialized skill development companies. This outsourcing has resulted in creation of employment opportunities for graduates, who would like to join banking sector.

Specialized recruitment and training companies like BankEdge offers graduates three and six months courses in banking and they will be later on deployed at banks as entry level employees.

Modern-day HR pundits have been going to town by sounding the alarm bells that jobs will be taken over by technology. Yes, technology is already transforming the job scenario in the BFSI sector. And, the situation throws up new potential as well as challenges for the banking industry; and it is imperative that institutions embrace the change.

The players in the BFSI sector simply cannot wish away the overarching influence of technology. An all-out effort is being made to go digital. The implementation of artificial intelligence, supported by machine learning, has to be the top priority. The entry of new players in the digital lending segment has prompted leading players in the banking sector to give more importance on providing superior services to their clients and also upgrading their technology infrastructure.

While the ever-changing advancements in technology have brought the mobile and internet banking under focus, new areas that are set to go through transformation also have come to the fore. They include segments such as marketing, customer service, operations, etc. These sectors call for future-ready skill-sets such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, project management, analytics, cloud, database management, data architecture, etc.

At the core lies improving customer experience and employee journey. And digitization is shaped by future-ready skillsets. Going forward, the leading players in the BFSI sector will have to focus on these areas and thus need manpower skills in these cutting-edge areas.

The BFSI sector is moving towards higher adoption of fintech methods to improve their overall course of business and people who have studied AI, blockchain, finance technologies, and data science, will be in huge demand in future.

Needless to say, people with cutting-edge technical skill sets will transform the job market in unfathomable ways. In fact, the relationship between fintechs and banks are going through a churn all over the world.

Adding to that is the new-age associations that have the potential to change the paradigms of the banking industry, eventually shaking its very foundation. Last year, we saw Apple launching a credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs.

Now, search engine leader Google has announced its plans to come up with consumer bank accounts in partnership with Citibank. This sort of new marriage between fintech companies and tech giants like Google is sure to change the rules of the game in the days to come, prompting traditional banks and established financial services firms to prepare themselves for the tech advancements and the resultant transformations.

 Santosh Joshi, CEO, BankEdge