Jobs in finance are being rapidly transformed by technological change, particularly AI and machine learning, but turning to refugees and others whose backgrounds give them the right mind set to succeed would be one answer to the severe talent shortage in this sector.

Speaking at a FinTech Influencers event in London, Ian Pickup (pictured far right), COO at the University of East London, told the audience there were many students at his university “whose prior experiences has been enormously challenging and therefore have enormous amounts of resilience, enormous amounts of the ability to be challenged, to think outside the box and to learn from failure”.

Pickup said turning this potential into the talent that employers in the sector were looking for meant working with employers and others in the sector to ensure that potential was fulfilled.

Fellow panel member Dermot Shortt (second left), co-founder of investment banking software company Finbourne Technology, said that faced with a severe shortage of people with critical skills employers were already looking beyond the traditional sources of talent. He said his company “was so desperate for coders” that it had hired a women from a drone company, who didn’t know anything about financial markets. “It doesn’t matter because it is the sort of challenge that she wants to get her teeth into for nine months; that is what she wants to do.”

Also on the panel, Tram Anh Nguyen (centre), co-founder of fintech learning and innovation platform CFTE, agreed that employers in the sector are prepared to be more flexible about the backgrounds of people they are willing to hire. “They are coming from diverse industries and backgrounds,” she said.

Although she said 50% of those her company was educating came from a finance background, many came from “totally different backgrounds and skill sets – people from marketing, journalists, technologists and lawyers are today getting into jobs”.

Nikola Plecas (second from right), fintech strategies & propositions, VISA Europe, said that large companies such as VISA and the big banks faced the additional challenge that millennials in particular “want to work for a cool new company”. He said that VISA had responded by making efforts to change its culture by offering people “growth opportunities to really learn and to be exposed to a variety of the company’s businesses and services”.

Toby Babb (far left), founder and CEO of Harrington Starr, founder of FinTech Influencers along with The Realization Group, said there been an evolution in the way that recruitment agencies approached talent in the sector. Chairing the panel, he said that this had changed from “we need someone who has come from this background who has this particular skill set”, to a focus on soft skills and understanding companies’ culture and DNA. “That is where we can add and provide people with real value,” he added.

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