Travelex, the foreign exchange provider, last week launched a £25 million digital growth fund and a “major recruitment drive” as it seeks to accelerate its digital transformation. Travelex is advertising jobs in marketing, sales, data analytics and payments.
The company, which serves 37 million customers across 1,400 stores, plans to recruit a team to drive its retail and financial technology, or fintech, innovations.
Sean Cornwell, chief digital officer, said Travelex’s recruitment drive will enable it to bring “digital to the core of our offerings”.
The world’s largest foreign exchange specialist online provides remittances and online international payments through partnerships with Western Union and Ozforex, as well as sourcing and distributing FX banknotes for central banks and international financial institutions.
Travelex’s new fund seeks to make investments and technology acquisitions in retail and fintech to develop new products and services linked to mobile, e-wallets and location technology. About 40% of its retail sales in the UK are already digital in origin through either online or mobile channels, according to Sean.
It is one of a host of UK financial services groups – large and small – which are ramping up recruitment as they transition into digital-led operations.
Barclaycard, a fast-growing arm of Barclays Bank, is seeking data analytics managers and is looking to business schools to satisfy its recruitment demand.
Morgan McKinley, the recruitment firm, said this month that 7,410 jobs were created in the City of London during October 2014.
But Astbury Marsden, another leading London recruiter, said that a 46% increase in City finance recruiting last month was led by banks’ investment in the “digital agenda”.
There has been a surge in hiring to handle the integration of collateral management across business units and digitalisation of processes to cut costs, and to improve real-time assessment of the risk profile of assets for risk management and regulatory reporting.
Adam Jackson, director at Astbury Marsden, said: “Investment in IT is no longer being seen as a cost, but as a key to unlocking better long-term profitability for the sector.”
He added that this digitisation of banking processes is already having a “profound impact” on hiring activity at the large investment banks and this is set to continue into 2015 and beyond.
A survey this month by Deloitte, the consultancy, called for banks to show potential recruits the “variety of creative digital roles” on offer, and to change the way they promote themselves to business graduates.
Matt Perkins, a head of financial services at Deloitte, said: “Banks need students with information technology skills to meet both regulatory demands and consumer preferences for online and mobile banking.”
However, he pointed out that over one-third of students Deloitte surveyed do not think banks are innovative or dynamic.
This echoes a survey into UK big data opportunities by Tech Partnership, the employers’ network, and business analytics firm SAS UK, which found that three quarters of respondents – 20% of whom were financial services employers – find it hard to fill data positions.
Bank of New York Mellon created a technology lab in Silicon Valley this month, following Capital One and Wells Fargo, to work on tech projects including Digital Pulse, the bank’s effort to harness the big data it gathers.
BNY Mellon will hire 20 people by the end of the year and then will “ramp up” recruitment in 2015.
An October report by Hays, the global recruiting firm, said that accounting employers look for candidates who can adapt to a “constantly evolving digital environment”.
“Even today’s senior manager needs digital expertise to be able to locate knowledge, assess how valid it is, and then work with others to determine what to do with it,” said Jonathan Sampson, a Hays’ regional director.
Credit Suisse is introducing a “Digital Private Bank” that will start in the Asia-Pacific region, offering portfolio management and social networking tools for clients.
About two-thirds of the world’s high-net-worth individuals expect to manage some of their wealth digitally within five years, according to a 2014 Capgemini SA and Royal Bank of Canada report.
Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, recently appointed a new financial chief and handed back digital and information technology issues to its CEO, as the bank seeks to enhance its online and mobile services.
Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, Deutsche’s co-chief executive officers, said in a statement that “we are beginning to see considerable opportunities arising from the digitalization of our businesses”.
Digitalization is also creating opportunities in high-frequency trading firms. Electronic trading houses have stepped up hiring in London and have been poaching staff from large investment banks in the process, according to a recruitment firm.
Dr Ingmar Nolte, a high-frequency data researcher with the accounting and finance department at Lancaster University Management School, told BusinessBecause that all of the core financial curriculum of MBA programs can be applied to high-frequency or algorithmic trading.
He said: “It is my understanding that electronic trading firms are trying to recruit more and more students from top quantitative and math finance programs.”
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