The growing challenge of attracting talent to post-trade and keeping employees’ skills current

Abstract

Digital transformation, emergence of modern technologies, regulatory drivers and ever-increasing quest for efficiencies has pushed the financial industry, including the post-trade business, through a tremendous change over the past decade. This change has introduced new requirements for systems and organisations, but most importantly towards staff working in these areas. In this paper, we discuss the implications of the changes in operational landscape for the required skill sets, the challenges and opportunities in attracting and retaining talent, and techniques to build the needed competences for organisations to be equipped for the requirements of the future. This is done by examining the research on general topics and linking that to experience from business and real-life examples related to talent attraction, talent management and competence building in post-trade. Based on that, we see that talent challenge is industry-agnostic, linking to both tight labour markets and changing competence requirements. To address this, companies must ensure that basic talent management practices are well deployed, try out some non-traditional talent pools and new ways of working, as well as bring talent attraction and retention activities to a level that resonates with the new generation (Gen Z and Millennials), who are much quicker in their career moves and are driven by different values and realities compared to their more senior colleagues. We conclude that building talent and skills inhouse is the most important way to approach this challenge, and as a side-effect it will also help in the specific challenge of talent retention. Building talent in-house, however, requires committed leadership and management, investment in learning tools and engaged staff to bring lasting results.