First things first, what are Job Transformation Maps, or JTMs?
JTMs look at how key trends such as artificial intelligence, automation, digitalisation and sustainability are impacting sector-specific jobs and skills.
These JTMs were developed by Workforce Singapore (WSG) with government agencies and the banking and finance industry to help provide recommended pathways for employers to reskill their workforce in growth job roles and redesign jobs to align with rapidly evolving industry developments.
They serve as a useful compass for employers, Trade Associations and Chambers (TACs), training providers, job redesign consultants, unions and individuals, helping them prepare for future jobs and skills requirements.
Employers and TACs can tap into the JTMs to identify opportunities to transform jobs and skills to bolster growth and value creation.
Singapore jobseekers and workers can also use JTMs to understand the jobs and skills in demand, to make informed decisions about their career development, and proactively enhance their skill sets.
Equip yourself with expert career tips and land your ideal job on MyCareersFuture.
What are upcoming trends in the banking and finance sector that will lead to job redesign?
Three upcoming trends that Singapore employers will be focusing on are:
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Advanced analytics
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
RPA is already used extensively in the finance sector to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks such as data entry and reconciliation.
Advanced analytics is becoming increasingly prevalent, with financial institutions leveraging big data and machine learning algorithms to gain deeper insights into customer behaviour, risk management, and fraud detection.
AI, meanwhile, is evolving rapidly, with chatbots and virtual assistants already being deployed in customer service and advisory roles.
WSG’s JTMs for the sector examined the impact of these three trends on the job tasks performed by 121 job roles identified across front office, mid-office, back office, and enterprise functions in the financial services industry in Singapore.
According to the JTMs, three key factors that could affect the pace and extent of the anticipated impact of data analytics and automation on job roles in the industry:
- Regulatory requirements on new and emerging technologies
- Legacy infrastructure
- Ever-changing customer preferences and levels of customer trust
Here are some key findings employers should take note as part of their plans for job redesign in the banking and finance sector.
Agility over silo functions
The need to be increasingly agile is facilitating a shift toward more cross-functional teams and organisations.
For example, some of the cross-disciplinary collaborations cited were:
- The development of trading algorithms in investment banking requires a close working relationship between the quantitative analysts, traders as well as technology specialists.
- Increasing collaboration between data scientists and compliance professionals to detect complex behavioural patterns, anticipate future crime schemes and predict emerging criminal behaviours.
- A retail underwriter working with data analysts to leverage new data streams (for example, from wearable technology and sensors), while playing a more active role in product design – such as defining the core elements (for example, rules and pricing frameworks) that are crucial for the development of standardised product architectures.
Jobs will start to converge, rather than be eliminated
As automation technologies take over repetitive administrative tasks, some traditional roles will be affected and the work performed by humans is likely to converge and evolve.
For example:
- Surveillance roles in compliance are expected to converge because of automation, and will be carried out by jobholders who can handle both trade and transaction monitoring. They will need to be reskilled in advanced digital acumen/literacy to understand how to operate new AI-enabled machines and to analyse and provide predictive insights.
- Similarly, as RPA is increasingly adopted to generate investment performance reports. The job role of an Investment Performance Analyst in asset management firms is likely to expand to include aspects of product development given their understanding of investment products.
- In retail banking, Unit Trust and Fund Administration roles will likely see a convergence with other product sales roles as advanced analytics and AI provide greater and faster insights into the customer needs and purchase appetite. This will require jobholders to reskill in data interpretation and analysis to be able to best draw insights from the data at hand and convert to actionable plans that can result in improved selling capabilities.
Skills for workers and jobseekers in the banking and finance industry
According to the JTMs, the wide range of job roles within the industry means that for some, additional skills training will come as natural progressions in their roles. For others, it may require a substantial shift in skills to be able to work alongside tasks that have been automated, or contribute meaningfully when data analytics provides more information than was previously available.
A common finding across all subsectors is that as product, processes, services and client complexity increases, the nature of the skills required will look much more tailored to the given role and there will be a need to rely more heavily on human judgment for deep, bespoke insights.
An example is in private banking, where portfolio and product development roles need to display the ability to connect the dots using all information available while applying personal judgment to deliver customised solutions or services to their stakeholders.
While data analytics and automation are expected to augment certain job roles in this subsector, ultimately the core of these will remain reliant on human interactions and the critical personalised touch with clients.
Across financial services, as advanced analytics is more fully embedded in banking and finance organisations, financial institutions will move to more customer-centric views. This will result in products and services that will be customised at all levels of the wealth stream requiring a shift or rethinking by FIs on how to manage consumers of the future.
Another point to note is that roles that require deep domain and industry expertise will continue to need those specific skills even with the adoption of data analytics and automation.
As an example, while research related roles and tasks can become more efficient when using RPA and AI to collect information, the actual task of insight generation and deriving meaning behind the data will continue to require human judgment and decision making.
A major pivot towards sustainable finance
The Sustainable Finance JTM also laid out the impact of sustainability trends on jobs in Singapore’s financial services sector and the emerging skills that the workforce will require to serve sustainable financing demand in the region.
During the launch of the JTM, Dilys Boey, Chief Executive of WSG, said, “Through WSG’s collaboration with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF), the Sustainable Finance JTM marks a significant step towards building a skilled workforce to serve the growing sustainable finance market in Singapore and ASEAN.”
“It underscores our commitment to equip Singaporeans with the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in the evolving landscape of sustainable finance, while contributing to the nation’s sustainability goals.”
Other key findings from the JTM are:
More than 50,000 professionals in the financial services sector will see new sustainable finance-related tasks added to their jobs to a moderate to high degree. This applies to several career tracks, especially:
- Risk
- Compliance and legal
- Product solutioning and management
- Sales and after-sales
- Distribution and relationship management
Examples of these new tasks include incorporating sustainability risks into enterprise risk management frameworks or structuring specialised products to meet sustainable finance demands.
It also found that 20 unique job roles are high-priority roles for upskilling, which include:
- Relationship managers in corporate banking
They will need knowledge in sectoral decarbonisation pathways and sustainable finance instruments, to identify and explain related service offerings to clients.
- Portfolio managers
They will need skills in sustainable investment management and the ability to construct appropriate investment portfolios based on investors’ sustainability strategies and preferences.
New job roles will also emerge, in areas such as sustainability risk and sustainability strategy. These new roles will become more prevalent as financial institutions increasingly prioritise sustainability as a core business strategy for their organisations.
Specialised and deep sustainable finance skill sets will be required to perform these new job roles.
For example, the sustainability strategy role will need to design enterprise-level sustainable finance strategies and implement sustainability risk management policies.
Dilys concluded, “Financial institutions can tap on WSG’s Career Conversion Programmes (CCPs) to equip mid-career new hires and existing financial services professionals with the emerging skills like sustainable finance instruments or sustainability risks, necessary to support the financial sector achieve its sustainable finance goals!”
Follow us on LinkedIn for more expert career guidance and industry insights: Workforce Singapore on LinkedIn
Stay updated with the latest trends, job market shifts and career health advice from WSG.
