Technology professionals are among the most in-demand employees worldwide, and the war for such talent continues to heat up. Banks in Latin America are no strangers to the highly competitive search for quality candidates. Sixty-five percent of banks and financial services companies in Mexico, for example, reported talent shortages in 2022, according to recruitment agency Manpower Group.
And while 20 years ago there was the expectation that people would work for one company until retirement, today the career journey of each individual follows a less linear path. In addition, banks are experiencing difficulties when trying to find talent with different skill sets to those they looked for in the past.
“Cyber crime, data analytics and user experience are among the most needed [skills] in Mexico. I need candidates who understand that what had been in the past face-to-face interactions have now been moved to a digital environment,” says Kristien Turner, regional head of talent acquisition for Mexico and Latin America at HSBC.
While Mexico is a sizeable fintech and digital banking ecosystem, banks still face challenges to find candidates. Some of the problems are rooted in the many misconceptions about the country, according to Mr Turner, but this is beginning to change. “I have seen a rapid improvement in the past few years in English-speaking skills, as more foreign firms have established themselves in the country,” he says.
But there are also deep talent pools elsewhere. Citi, for example, is looking to Chile to source the talent it needs. Maria Fernanda Ordoñez, Latin America head of human resources at Citi, says: “We have grown significantly in Santiago, where our service centre is very much focused on technology and where we are able to find these skill sets in the market.”
Yet, even if the talent is out there, it is becoming clear that financial institutions need to adapt themselves to the candidates they want to attract.
Diverse talent
Given the state of play of job markets in different countries, financial institutions are working on how to map out their future talent needs, as well as identify where they can find the talent. “We are designing recruitment strategies focused on new skills, such as technology, cyber security, data analytics, experience design and artificial intelligence (AI), to focus on some of the new capacities we are developing within the bank,” says Enrique Gonzalez, human resources vice-president at Bancolombia.
But diversity, such as gender, remains an issue, especially when banks are trying to get staff back into the office following the Covid-19 pandemic. “In Chile, our human resources team keeps telling us it is becoming a challenge to attract female talent in technology because the minute we tell them that they have to come to the office three days a week, they drop out of the process,” says Ms Ordoñez.
Banks in Latin America, like elsewhere, are coming up against fast-growing and exciting fintechs when looking to attract digital talent, which is making the hiring process even more difficult. The necessity of attracting such talent has led to institutions widening their net to include people that have worked in fields other than banking.
The fast-changing technology environment has also meant that all employees, even those that do not work on the IT desk, need to have some familiarity with technology. Data analytics, machine learning and AI are skills some banks were not necessarily looking for five years ago, which has led to a serious skills gap. For example, according to Mr Turner, data analytics is used across all of the fields including risk and compliance divisions, and even in human resources.
As such, candidates are more often asked to grasp how technology affects banks’ day-to-day activities. “If the candidate thinks Python is a [snake], they are not the right candidate. Maybe their job responsibilities do not include computer programming, but they should know what the program is,” says Ricardo Valente, director of banking and financial services at Talenses Executive, a recruitment firm.
Attracting candidates
In the past few years, there has been a change in how banks approach the market for talent. “The best talent is passive, waiting for companies to make an offer. So we are changing our processes to be more proactive and get in the market to find these profiles,” says Fernando Bellón, global head of talent acquisition at BBVA.
Germanuela de Abreu, head of human resources at Santander Brasil and South America, adds: “Latin America offers an abundance of opportunities, while the market in Europe is more static. This means companies need to be competitive and try to offer something more to retain employees.”
Nowadays, the interviewer has the chance to connect with potential candidates much earlier in the process.
Previously, a bank got to know the candidate only at the interview, while today they can learn a lot about a potential employee through social media. “Nowadays, the interviewer has the chance to connect with potential candidates much earlier in the process. The bank needs to reposition itself in the community, in universities, etc. It is important to be a brand for which people want to work,” says Ms de Abreu.
For this reason, changing the perception of banking and what it means to be a banker is important among university students and the younger generation. “People usually think the banks mainly offer opportunities only for people who aspire to work in finance. But banks have many more positions to offer,” says Bancolombia’s Mr Gonzalez.
BBVA has created an employer branding unit for talent acquisition to communicate with the market through LinkedIn or Glassdoor, for example.
To make scouting analysis easier, the bank is relying on new technologies. “We are using customer relationship management tools to find profiles and expanding this tool across the countries where we are present,” says Mr Bellón. “BBVA in Mexico is huge. Actually 50% of all our new hires are from Mexico. So this is a massive undertaking for the bank in the country.”
As the hiring process becomes more intricate, retention becomes key. Candidates are especially attracted to companies which offer training opportunities and career development.
Scouting for diversity
Diversity and inclusion are also becoming top priorities for banks, in part to increase their employee retention and create a sense of inclusion. “We have anthropologists working in our talent acquisition team. This allows us to understand how people from minorities feel in the bank. We revised our selection process to understand if and at what point it undermines diverse talent,” says Mr Gonzalez at Bancolombia.
But that may take a lot more effort and time in the recruitment process.
“We worked with a large Brazilian fintech company and when we visited the company, the main shareholder realised that most of the external collaborators of the company were Black and/or from a humble background,” Mr Valente recalls. “He [was determined to hire] a Black woman as vice-president to create an inclusive culture. We interviewed around 50 people and ended up hiring someone who was working in Europe at the time.”
Banks have long had a reputation for recruiting from prestigious universities, which in Latin America tend to be private and therefore attract students from advantaged backgrounds. This phenomenon tends to amplify wealth and racial inequality in what is already one of the most unequal regions of the world.
“If I only hire people from top universities, I am only going to find people with certain characteristics. This will not generate diversity within the company,” says Santander’s Ms de Abreu. “We are instead looking at the experience of the candidate, rather than focusing on the university he or she is coming from.”
Put 30 engineers from the same background in a room and they are going to all think the same way, adds Ms de Abreu.
“Especially in the world of IT, we are moving towards a skill analysis rather than just focusing on their titles or where they studied. There are various specialised academies in topics such as AI, cyber security and data,” says BBVA’s Mr Bellón.
HSBC has joint programmes with public universities such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico. For its graduate programmes in Mexico it filters candidates from a range of universities, more than half of which are public, says Mr Turner.
The bank has also partnered with the Association of Mexican Banks to create a programme with Conalep, a Mexican public technical high school serving low-income students. The programme gives students a bootcamp on bank operations, digital banking and customer service over a nine-month period, with the bank actively recruiting from this pool of students to give them a fast track into an entry-level customer service-orientated role.
Looking for talent beyond the traditional Ivy League-equivalent universities in Latin America helps banks attract Black talent and candidates from different social backgrounds in places like Brazil, says Ms Ordoñez.
In Brazil, Citi has been partnering with non-profit organisation United Way Brazil to train young talent on technology, targeting disadvantaged people from the outskirts of São Paulo. “In Brazil, we doubled the number of Black employees over the past three years. We are now seeing these individuals advance in the organisation to more senior roles,” says Ms Ordoñez.
In addition, Citi also increased the hiring of employees with disabilities in Mexico by 136% from 2021 to 2022.
Bancolombia is developing programmes to attract talent from all over the country, because most of the people who tend to work for the bank come from the three or four major cities, highlighting how inclusion should also take geography into account, according to Mr Gonzalez.
While diversity efforts are taking different forms, lenders are still trying to work on the ever-present gender gap. For example, women make up 40% of Santander’s board of directors and the bank is committed to getting women in 35% of top management roles by 2025, according to Ms de Abreu.
Financial institutions are specifically struggling to have more women working in technology, as well as increasing their presence in the most senior positions. “We have a referral programme to increase the number of women working in technology within the bank,” explains Mr Bellón at BBVA.
A sustainability niche
The area of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) is a rapidly growing financial segment in Mexico and Latin America, according to Mr Turner. As such, banks have been creating units focusing on both sustainability and ESG, but the way they are approaching the topic may differ depending on the country.
“We are expanding these units across our countries [of operation],” says Mr Bellón at BBVA. “For example, in Spain we’re really focused on the world of solar energy and electric cars. But in Mexico, we are in the world of agriculture, which needs a very different approach. But there is still a huge amount of demand in the world of sustainability.”
He highlights the effort needed to find profiles in this domain. It is also a problem because there are not many people in the world who are experts in sustainability, so the bank is focusing on reskilling its employees.
Back to growth?
In the past few months, some of the largest banks have announced a number of job cuts or have slowed their hiring pace as they readjust after the recruitment spree in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Part of the caution is linked to a global slowdown, with the International Monetary Fund predicting that worldwide growth will contract from an estimated 3.5% in 2022 to 3% in 2023.
Hiring managers at Latin American banks might be able to take advantage of this situation. It has always been a challenge for banks in the region to find investment bankers or private bankers willing to move from the US or Europe to Latin America. That is a competitive issue, says Mr Bellón.
Large banks and payments companies in the region will be looking to grow in 2024, predicts Mr Valente at Talenses Executive. “The retail sector suffered during the pandemic, but 2024 and 2025 will be recovery years,” he says. “Therefore, payment companies, very much attuned to developments in the retail sector, are already planning to expand their business [and staffing levels] ahead of time, despite the current uncertain macroeconomic scenario.”
