For a competitive role in the financial sector

The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector employs a large part of the workforce and creates thousands of job opportunities every year. The sector needs manpower in several departments such as corporate banking, retail banking, treasury, finance, technology, marketing, sales, and human resources.

Banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions recruit fresh talent in business or finance roles based on an individual’s qualifications. Usually, an MBA or a PG Diploma in finance and banking are essential courses for such roles.

While public sector banks recruit staff through centralised recruitment tests such as Institute of Banking Personnel Selection recruitment, private companies have their own processes to hire and train candidates. For years, banks have been running pre-joining-programmes in collaboration with reputed professional training institutes in order to prepare selected candidates for the job.

These programmes offer hands-on experience in all the necessary elements of a banking role with workshops, role-plays, internships and on-the-job training. By the end of this training, candidates learn all the hard and soft skills such as problem-solving, management, communication, leadership, analytical and interpersonal skills and they become first-day first-hour productive at the workplace upon deployment.

Integration of technologies

An employee in the BFSI sector should have in-depth knowledge of the sector and familiarity with the latest developments to stay competitive. Since the sector is undergoing a fast-paced digital transformation by deploying emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, blockchain, etc., in day-to-day operations, the demand for skilled talent in these fields is significantly high.

Tech-enabled roles for financial services are gaining significance. Lending platforms including peer-to-peer lending, payments and micropayments, credit and risk analysis use deep technologies such as machine learning and advanced analytics, and customer behaviour management to analyse spending patterns based on the location (using GPS data), and they reduce dependency on intermediaries and middlemen with blockchain technology and others.

Data science and analytics have led to the emergence of a new breed of analysts and business intelligence professionals. Artificial intelligence and machine learning drive the sector towards automation and robotic process automation has replaced manpower. Even the HR domain, that has been paper-intensive until recently, is employing people adept in people analytics and digital HR solutions.

The disruption caused by fintech or insuretech startups has redefined the BFSI sector altogether. Twenty Indian startups find place in the CB Insights 2020 list of 250 most promising startups in the world. According to a report by KPMG, an international accounting organisation, India’s fintech companies raised $1.7 billion in the first six months of 2020, which is double compared to the previous year. This will drive global attention to India and large players have already started investing.

Traditional BFSI organisations have also started adopting fintech solutions and are now investing in upskilling their workforce to develop financial technologies. To that end, many institutes are curating special job assured programmes that are aligned to the needs of the BFSI industry. The objective is to produce future-ready IT
professionals to excel in the fintech space. Engineering graduates have a good opportunity to enrol in these programs to gradually make an in-road into high-paying jobs in the financial industry.

(The writer is chief business officer of a BFSI education services)