I want a bank job… is it there for me?

Friends, I want to share with you all something interesting. During one of my pre-placement sessions, an enthusiastic youngster from the audience raised a question:

Indeed it is a very good question, I replied.  Ofcourse, he has a valid concern.

I took few minutes to address his query by viewing the issue from multiple dimensions:

1. The Digital Revolution(also known as the Third Industrial Revolution) is the shift from mechanical and analogue electronic technology to digital electronics which began in the latter half of the 20th century, with the adoption and proliferation of digital computers and digital record-keeping, that continues to the present day.
2. Going digital is the mantra for all industries and obviously, Banking & Financial Services is not an exception. In fact, Banks have been pioneers in digital adoption.
3. Becoming digital is not an overnight phenomenon. It is a journey of many learning to all the players in a bank’s eco-system. We can safely say that at any point of time the digital agenda of a Bank is a WiP (Work in Process).
4. Secondly, digital is expected to enhance the quality of product/service delivery and enrich customer experience. The digital agenda of a Bank substantially strengthens the efficiency in other areas vis-à-vis cost rationalisation initiatives of the bank and it is only obvious that recruitment of human resources by a Bank would possibly go through a steady reduction in the future

With this background, let me brief you on how all of you could possibly look at this as an opportunity that should be actively tapped rather than brooding over the situation as an opportunity that has been missed or lost.

1. Re-engineer the thought process on your aspiration from joining a ‘Bank’ as an entity to joining ‘Banking’ as an industry player. Moreso, I would even advise you all to elevate the vision on your aspiration from ‘Banking’ to ‘Financial services’.
2. As banks progress from its oldest avatar of being totally manual to partial automation to complete automation to computerisation to digitalisation, they may shrink in size across few parameters like human capital. But, the eco-system around banks is expected to keep expanding.

Let me now address the space in the industry of banking and financial service wherein, you need to keep your eyes open rather than the entity called ‘a Bank’.

• You will see a surge in the need for entities with abundant banking knowledgeable resources that could provide multiple services to banks.
• These can be ‘Technology and / or operations ‘ service provider(s) to multiple banks or can be a dedicated provider (often referred to as Global In-sourcing Center or GIC) to a specific / particular Bank.
• We are also distinctly seeing Financial Technology (FinTech) and Payments as attractive emerging spaces in Banking / financial services industry.
• Additionally, advisory services and aggregator services are also showing promise.
• Here, it is essential to observe that as banks continue their pursuit in getting more and more for less and less, they will have to necessarily partner on large scale, with their eco-system partners mentioned above.
• We will henceforth come across less of banks and more of banking, which in turn would result in banking becoming incidental to customers’ life style / life stage management and would cease to be the stand-alone activities of banking for banking sake.

To conclude I would say that for all these to happen, it is these eco-system partners that Banks will look for in future.  Therefore, I strongly advice all of you not to lock your mind to be part of a bank as an entity but open the same mind to be part of the larger ecosystem.

Friends, the rules of the game are changing and you need to change and adapt to the new banking world.

Best of luck to all of you.

Regards,

Santosh Joshi