Banking and Financial Services (BFSI) are one of the oldest industry sectors in the world. Apparently, the oldest surviving bank of our times started in Italy way back in 1472. And in India, financial services industry started in late eighteenth century. BFSI sector is credited to empower people in giving shape to an idea and enabling the progress of humankind in a systematic manner. Though there are scathing comments on the contribution of BFSI industry to humanity, it is inseparable from our day to day existence. To create new jobs, boost demand for goods and services, make them available where demand lies, BFSI sector plays an invaluable role.
How do various pieces of BFSI sector fit together?
Like any other business, a firm in BFSI sector targets a segment of customers in the market, offers services that fulfil specific needs and innovatively offers services that cater to the latent needs of its customers.
Organizations and individuals alike have their own needs depending upon their unique context. For example, an individual might want to keep its cash, valuables and other assets safe; need cash to buy assets such as home, property, car, durables, jewellery, a luxury product, equity shares in a company or a vacation. An organization might need debt or equity, a system of receiving money from its customers and paying to vendors, to guarantee someone about paying or providing its products, assess risks and plan to underwrite them, or invest its surplus on financial securities.
Based on the kind of customer segment one caters to, various kinds of financial services are available in the market right from retail banking, nonbanking financial services, asset management services, insurance and forex services to private banking, investment banking and capital market services.
What is special for the talent in BFSI sector?
Every organization has its own context such as the kind of customer segment it caters to, the competitive forces it deals with, the type of service offerings and its strategic priorities. These apart, there are certain general requirements in terms of skillsets and characteristics. What are these?
Roles which require customer interactions need people with social skills, adaptability and empathy combined with high levels of attention to details and numeric ability. The people who work in the mid office and the back office need to have high levels of analytical ability, process rigour and innovation ability. They need to have a penchant for technology and deploy it in their work to increase efficiency.
We have seen right from computerisation, ATM network, internet banking to online transaction in capital markets and UPI (unified payments interface). New technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, augmented reality are going to find their place more and more. So, the talent in BFSI sector need to have a degree of familiarity with these and the interest to learn and deploy them at work.
Integrity and trustworthiness are great personal values that anyone in BFSI sector must exhibit. Many people believe that the financial crisis of 2008 was rooted in greed and lack of integrity of the bankers. Financial institutions who have lasted decades have always vouched for the smart minds who worked for them and their high levels of grit and integrity.
How do we get the talent on board?
The first step is to have a clarity on the kind of talent needed. The recruiter needs to know the personality traits and the skill sets required, the assessment methods to use and the benchmarks for selection. The obvious next step is to know the number of people to recruit, the timelines and the budgets.
Most important step is to put a plan together in terms of where to source the talent from, talent attraction plan and the employer brand promise. Several recruiting plans do not yield desirable results due to inadequate clarity in any of these aspects. Most often, we deploy a combination of methods to source the desired talent.
Many organizations get their line managers and recruiters to deploy a handful of methods which worked well for them in the past. They tend to use the sources they are familiar with and offer a generic value proposition to the prospective candidates. This approach works, but does not guarantee results on a consistent basis.
Like we rely on the advice of specialist doctors to take care of our health, it is best that the BFSI players looking for some of the finest minds with the combination of multiple competencies take help from the specialist recruiters.
