Fintech talent recruitment and retention in the post-pandemic age

Fintech talent recruitment recently has been cut-throat, particularly in Asia, where, according to consultancy McKinsey, some 97% of the population relies on digital channels when interacting with their banks.

Banks and fintechs are now taking steps to avoid brain drain and to nurture new talent. As part of DBS’s ambitions in Singapore to become a progressive tech leader and recruit and nurture multidisciplinary talent, this month the bank launched a Fintech Apprenticeship Programme to prepare polytechnic students for technology roles.

In a statement, Jimmy Ng, DBS group chief information officer and head of technology and operations, says the aim is to provide a blueprint for industry and education institutions to forge more partnerships, which he believes will become increasingly important for nurturing “the next generation of future-ready talent”.

Further such initiatives are rapidly unfolding. Global recruitment consultancy Resource Solutions has recently launched an internal programme called the Recruiter Academy, specifically dedicated to access non-recruiter talent and train them to be high-quality recruiters. 

Phill Brown, the consultancy’s global head of market intelligence, says technical talent is in great demand across a variety of different market sectors, but so is recruited talent. He says that the new programme “enable[s] us to access non-recruiter talent in the market, and then train them up to be great recruiters”.

“We also have similar programmes in place with other functions that actually look and play in the data space and the tech space. One of the key things that we understand from our clients at the moment is that software development expertise, data scientists and data analysts are very much in demand along with a load of other tech roles in, for example, cyber security,” he adds.

Money, confidence and culture

Rafael S. Lajeunesse, CEO of advisory fintech ReachX, cites new technologies such as blockchain that are being applied to fintech. “You need a lot of strong people in UX design, product management – that's typically where you see some gaps for companies. And that creates essentially a talent war for those jobs. But then it becomes a game of who can pay more? And, essentially, how do you keep the best people?”

An employee-focused culture is important, he says, adding: “The big equaliser is the money.”

Loretta Chan, managing partner at Asia-Pacific recruitment specialist Wellesley, says that until the early part of this year fintech was seeing strong recruitment growth, but that this has changed with headline failures such as cryptocurrency Luna and, more recently, crypto exchange FTX. “I think it's definitely put a damper on the market a little bit. Which means firms are having to lay off people,” she says.

Given the current uncertainty, there are two key strategies Ms Chan recommends. One is for senior management to give employees confidence that there are still clear growth plans and strategies for the business. The second is that “you […] need to fix the culture and make sure that the culture is tight because that also keeps people retained and keeps people together,” she adds.

But, she says, while most fintech firms give people the option to work from home, or to work abroad while travelling, Ms Chan doesn’t “think it's strong enough to keep someone in it just because of that reason; I think it has to be multifaceted.”

From that perspective, she says, there are some players that are structuring packages and giving long-term incentives for employees so that they will stay within the business.

Crossing the gulf from hiring to retention

One key finding of a new report by global payments provider BPC and strategy consultancy firm Fincog – which uncovers insights for banking players interested in the Middle Eastern digital banking market – is that the wealthier Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are major attractors of talent. The report concludes that a compelling employer branding or employee value proposition is necessary to attract talent who have a wide set of choices in front of them.

Hany Al Deeb, BPC managing director for GCC and Iraq, says recruiting and retaining talent in fintech companies takes a great deal of effort. “You need to make sure that effort doesn’t go to waste,” he says.

One key strategy, he says, is to ensure staff of all levels feel motivated by offering incentive schemes and reward recognition, “for instance through shares, good bonuses that give them and their family a sense of stability and a feeling that this is a good company”.

There must be a combination of motivation techniques, he says. “There's no quick answer, no easy solution. You've got to amalgamate all the different levels of experience.”

Lessons from the UK

Membership association FinTech Wales estimates that, over the past year, more than 1000 jobs have been created by Welsh fintechs. Some key contributors to these numbers include the significant recruitment across many enterprise and scaling fintechs in Wales, including Sonovate, Delio, Wealthify and Credas.

Sarah Williams-Gardener, FinTech Wales CEO, says: “Developing skills and talent to contribute to Wales’ fintech ecosystem is a key objective for FinTech Wales. Based on our members’ needs, we have already launched and delivered a number of Data Academy programmes in 2022 to be able to create work-ready coders for fintechs in Wales.”

“Ultimately,” she says, “our role is about listening to the sector and responding to continuously generate awareness and develop talent pipelines.”

Reflecting wider UK fintech challenges, Nadia Edwards-Dashti, co-founder of fintech recruiter Harrington Starr, says: “Despite economic challenges, we are still seeing volumes of growth hires across the UK fintech space. Retention remains a concern with the average hire in technology having only a 13-month tenure compared to triple that only a few years ago.” 

She adds: “We have seen a lot of unsustainable tactics, such as over-market-rate job offers, used to attract talent and often entice talent away from the competition.” Ms Edwards-Dashti explains that these offers can be £15,000 to £30,000 over what someone of that skill set would normally expect to attract at the offer stage. 

“The winners in the world of talent retention are those who are investing in their cultures. They are building environments where people can learn and be stretched,” she says.

Matthew Cheung is a co-founder of Work in Fintech, which runs work experience, insight days, virtual internships, teaching, mentoring and coaching for people from any background from high school to university. 

“Lack of suitable talent working in a start-up is quite different in terms of responsibility, autonomy and speed versus bigger firms. Brexit has both affected the pool of available talent as well as the knock on inflationary effects on salaries. Fintech also suffers from a lack of diversity with candidates often white and male,” says Mr Cheung.

Consequences of the pandemic

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, one strong reason for the growth in fintech recruitment initiatives is what is referred to as the ‘Great Resignation’, according to Marie Downes, chief talent officer at Adaptive Financial Consulting. “Pretty much every company, regardless of industry, is a technology company in one way or another,” she says.

“Within fintech, we are competing against a variety of different industries. We’re also competing against companies who have very relaxed remote working policies, such as the ‘anytime, anywhere’ approach, which has been incredibly attractive to those who enjoyed remote working or working from home during the pandemic and associated lockdowns or even before that.”

Responding to remote working can be a challenge for fintechs, given that it straddles the technology and finance industries, says Ms Downes, explaining that the ‘anytime, anywhere’ approach is “not always compatible with the – sometimes – more relationship-driven approach of the financial sector”.

“That said, there can, for some, be an impact from fully remote or mainly remote working with regard to mental health. The social glue that binds us as colleagues and the change of scenery that inspires us can be transformative in terms of mental health,” she adds.

Frederika Johnston, chief of staff at payments network Banked, says investment and competitive benefits are essential, as is a sense of engagement and belonging as part of the team. “We now have global meet-ups for our team, where we invest in bringing everybody together in the entire company to basically partly get to know their colleagues,” she says.

“It's definitely not cheap, but it is highly beneficial. And you do feel that the engagement and the morale, the way that people work together, is strongly impacted by things like that. We have to think hard and continuously about the communication tools that we have in place, and how we make sure that everyone is feeling engaged and involved,” adds Ms Johnston.

Benefits, she says, can be regionally focused; for example, in the US, Australia and Israel, pension contributions are imperative.

Fintech recruitment strategy, for the time being, is a moving target. Watch this space.