Oscar Williams-Grut, Senior City Correspondent, Yahoo Finance UK
Upskilling. Continuous learning. In-work training.
Whatever you call it, top bankers agree that finance workers will have to keep learning across their careers if they want to stay relevant — and keep their jobs — in a fast-changing industry.
“I think one of increasing skill sets of the future is your ability to learn because the hard skill set that you learn today very quickly becomes out of date in three or four years time,” Peter O’Hanlon, Lloyds Bank’s (LLOY.L) head of group corporate treasury technology, said at a conference on Tuesday.
O’Hanlon appeared on a panel about how people can “future proof” their careers at the FintechTalents Festival in London. Across the two-day conference, the topic came up repeatedly.
Like other industries, finance is reckoning with big changes brought about by technology. Concepts such as blockchain and peer-to-peer lending that didn’t exist a decade ago are now being discussed all the way up to board level. Fast-growing fintech startups are pushing sleepy institutions to innovate in everything from credit scoring to how they talk to customers. And emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and biometrics promise to only add to complexities.
“The people who can keep themselves relevant over a 10, 20, 30, 40-year career, they are going to be the people who are able to adapt — flexibility, ability to learn,” O’Hanlon said.
The implication is that those who can’t keep learning throughout their careers could face the chop as their skills become redundant.
Read more on Yahoo! Finance.
