While it’s well-known that robust tech teams are a must-have for finance firms today, the fast pace of change means hiring managers should always keep up to date with the latest technology requirements and skills to stay competitive and hire relevant key skills.
Here are three technology requirements that are fundamentally crucial to the future of financial services firms and how hiring IT talent with experience and knowledge in these areas could benefit your business.
1. AWS or Azure
Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure are fully managed cloud service platforms which give businesses access to many different integrated products and services including servers, storage, remote computing, email, security, networking, and mobile development capabilities.
Essentially, both AWS and Azure enable financial services firms to embrace digitisation without the time and costs involved in developing, implementing, and managing physical IT infrastructure in-house. Importantly, without the rigidity of internal IT infrastructure, managed cloud service providers support more scalable and adaptable business models for evolving financial services firms by offering immediate and cost-effective access to an adjustable mix of services and features designed to meet the needs of your customers, business model, and size.
For a more strategic IT function, hiring IT staff with experience in AWS, Azure, or both means your team will be equipped to continually evaluate and modify your technologies to maximise productivity and deliver the best customer experience.
Depending on your technology requirements, some of the key capabilities that could be configured for your business – with the right insights and know-how – include machine learning for automated customer service channels, financial market analytics, secure biometric customer verification, secure payments, application processing, operational intelligence, and data management. By onboarding staff with AWS/Azure skills, the opportunities to digitally transform with managed cloud services are potentially limitless.
2. DevOps
DevOps functions in financial services firms are becoming an increasingly essential technology requirement as businesses ramp up their efforts to meet changing customer demands.
With the unrelenting digitisation of products, services, and operational processes across the sector, talented DevOps Specialists guarantee that new software products and updates are released efficiently and safely by facilitating seamless collaboration between a firm’s IT development and operations teams. Consequently, DevOps functions help firms become more responsive to market trends by rolling out timely software releases and digital tools faster and more frequently.
But it is not just about keeping up to speed with the current market. Another key benefit of recruiting experienced DevOps staff is that it can drive independent innovation through increased agility. By breaking down the traditional barriers between a firm’s IT functions and operations, businesses are in a better position to take a “develop fast, fail fast, and learn fast” approach to experimenting and delivering new ideas to market in the race to stay ahead of the competition.
DevOps capabilities can also lower costs and enhance productivity by giving firms more control over their project timelines and deliverables. While DevOps Specialists speed up traditionally lengthy and expensive development and deployment methods, proactively updating products and tools ongoing – internally and externally – can minimise operational costs, improve workflow efficiency, and drive revenue through customer engagement.
3. SailPoint
Identity governance in a finance firm is all about reducing the risks of data security breaches by ensuring users are only granted access to the information and functions they need to perform their authorised tasks.
As the digitisation of products, services and workflows accelerates across the financial services sector, advanced identity governance capabilities are becoming an increasingly important technology requirement for maintaining a secure and compliant IT infrastructure. Without robust identity governance practices, financial systems, and the vast amounts of sensitive information they handle, are open to theft, misuse, or even sabotage, which can affect productivity, reputation, and result in costly penalties.
Cloud solutions such as SailPoint are giving finance firms immediate access to sophisticated and ‘ready to use’ identity governance technologies. Specifically, SailPoint integrates with and connects every identity, application, and system across a business’ cloud and inhouse IT environment to govern access for all users.
Recruiting an Identity Asset Management Engineer with experience in SailPoint could help your firm leverage several benefits of enhanced identity governance technology such as knowing and recording users’ access for compliance, generating audit reports, setting up alerts for suspicious access, adjusting access controls to prevent conflicts of interest, automating new user account creation and removal, and centrally managing access across different types of users.
Does your firm have the requisite technology requirements for the future?
In the financial services sector, a firm’s ability and willingness to keep up to date with the latest technology requirements carries many implications.
Crucially, it can determine how quickly you evolve your products and business model to meet market demands, how efficiently and productively you operate, the security of your systems, and the integrity of your compliance practices.
With so much at stake, hiring managers must continue to learn about the latest technology requirements in the financial services sector while onboarding the right talent who can use them to the business’ best advantage.
