As you might recall, Amdas covered Fintech in one of our previous articles The Impact of Fintech Companies on the Financial Sector.
In that article, we wondered if Finance companies might start to bring techie skills in-house by employing candidates with those skills. This would make them less reliant upon Fintech companies.
As we all know, the internet is awash with predictions and trends. Nevertheless, it does seem that 2018 is beginning to see the emergence of these skills in-house. This is probably not too much of a threat to the Fintechs who are offering services to the traditional financial services companies. Fortunately for the Fintechs, Financial services seem to be in search of staff with IT skills mainly involving an understanding of Cloud-based ERP systems and how to report from big data.
As a result, advanced excel is no longer enough for finance professionals. Employers are now seeking proficiency in software such as SAP, Oracle, MS Dynamics, MS visual and Quickbooks and basic programming, such as SQL.
Furthermore, where data analytics was traditionally the realm of data and business analysts, companies are now looking to their accountants to possess these skills too. This seems to be to advance productivity and plan against any Brexit uncertainty.
The Defining Area
However, there is one area that might see Financial Services looking to do more in-house; block chaining. At present, this is something that is primarily the domain of Fintechs. You might have heard of Bitcoin. Well, this currency is a cryptocurrency and blockchain. It is all very complex but essentially, the blockchain is the technology underlying the currency. This technology creates an unalterable ledger. Said ledger can then be simultaneously accessed by multiple parties.
Banks, in particular, see potential in this tech as it effectively negates the need to manually send a message with a ledger attached. Furthermore, it does away with the need for version control or manual reconciliation.
They seem to see so much potential that, according to the IBM Blockchain website, 91% of banks are investing in blockchain solutions by 2018.
Demand for freelance blockchain developers in the financial sector exceeded supply by 21%.
So, I guess we can see where this is heading. Since the demand exceeds supply, financial services will have to upskill their staff. Watch this space.