Beena Parmar and M Saraswathy Moneycontrol News
Are you worried about not getting a job in a bank? You will need to upgrade your skills to suit the growing automation and digital technology that is eating into the traditional jobs.
As the buzz grows that computer, technology and artificial intelligence (AI) is taking away many jobs in the banking sector, experts suggest that only the requirement of number of people may be relatively less, but hiring opportunities will continue with new roles and newer skill requisites to make one relevant to seek a job.
According to Moorthy K. Uppaluri, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Randstad India, a human resource solutions firm, “Technology is just an enabler and it is moving up the value chain so I don’t see roles completely vanishing. You have multiple roles and technology is being infused into various roles to various degrees and some job roles will see some consolidation in variations but not disappear completely.
“The total number of jobs may seem that they are shrinking but there are also new types of roles being introduced big data, data scientists, digital transformations, etc. Had it not been for these new roles, it might look like a shrink but overall new jobs will also get added, maybe not to the way they were being added earlier.”
Prime facie, traditional bank jobs at branches like cash teller, document verification, cash deposits, passbook updation, etc. are done digitally or sent online having reduced the need of people to do so.
“Rate of growth of jobs in financial services will slow, there is automation happening and therefore the need for more people will reduce. Having said that, the distribution footprint will continue to grow and given the fact that the penetration of financial services continues to be low, we will require more touch-points. Roles which are repetitive, transactional and more operational in nature will be in jeopardy. But more relationship oriented, front office jobs or personal finance kind of roles will be needed,” said Rajiv Anand, Executive Director - Retail Banking, Axis Bank, country’s third largest private lender.
He added that as far as new skills are concerned, banks would need people who understand more of digital, IT (information and technology), data such as data scientist roles, etc.
Axis Bank’s employee base grew by 13 percent to 56,617 as compared to 19 percent increase in the year ago period.
HDFC Bank, country’s second largest private lender, has been hiring less in the last two quarters with its staff strength in fiscal 2017 dipping by 3,230 to 84,325, while the same had increased by 10,729 in the previous year.
Many banks, especially private sector ones including ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank are also enhancing the use of technology to have digital or virtual assistants in the form of robotic software, chatbots to assist customers, centralised application of loans over the internet, at ATMs (automated teller machines) essentially reducing turnaround time, faster loan and service processing effectively automating basic and time-consuming tasks.
Global banks are also continually changing their business priorities and thereby cutting jobs with mid-level managers also bearing the brunt.
Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services explained that in the future about 95 percent of clerical jobs which involve verification of data will go off the system.
Only jobs that require individual analysis like investment banking and wealth management that cannot be done purely with the help of a machine will be relevant. Specific skills that will be required in the banking sector include data analytics and artificial intelligence that will help individuals design relevant software for the consumers. Hence, niche technology-led courses in these spaces will what will help one stay in the industry, he said.
According to Anand, “There is some degree of re-skilling (at Axis Bank) that is happening internally and we also tie-up with various universities to get people with specific skills, both of existing employees and new ones. We will continue to hire for specific skills and also to shore up our distribution.”
Typically, automation is happening in retail and wherever there is economies of scale, the technology will regularise and impact the roles but is unlikely to be any dramatic or disruptive shift in how banking will happen. There will be natural upscaling of people and jobs and there will be need for newer skills from people.
Ajay Shah, head of recruitment services at Teamlease, a manpower firm said, “This is a consolidation phase for banks but they will continue to grow their retail book. Banking being a service industry and the reach across the country still being conventional, hiring will continue but there will be realignment of roles. We believe that incremental hiring would increase by about 10 percent in the next 12 months, largely in the private banks.”
According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, as on March 31, 2016, the banking industry had 1.26 million employees, an increase of 79,440 employees from 1.18 million in 2015. The increase was a substantial from an increase of about 30,000 employees from 2014.
Apart from small finance and payment banks, new age universal bank IDFC Bank also plans to increase its physical expansion through touch points and business correspondent points, while Bandhan Bank plans to recruit 6,000 more employees this year.
This may not be such a sob story for the banking job aspirants even as they may have to strive to keep up with the new job skill requirements in the sector.
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