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today um which will look at new rows and banking technology sharing their views with us will be alex yu talon acquisition lead of tech and ops for dbs bank 10c10 executive director global head of intelligent automation for asset and wealth management and change mobilization for from jpm tier leeway technology channels engagement and experience from standard chartered bank lawrence go managing director and group ceo for group technology and operations riob and moderating the panel for us is ms yolyman head of career advisory and hr from ibf over to you lyman thank you good afternoon everybody hey hi hello hi so i've got alex uh tensey lawrence uh leeway would you want to join us via the video so let's give a minute more for leeway hi leeway okay we've got the the full panel here well uh once again a very warm afternoon um to each and everyone the panel and the participants i'm very mindful that we have a precious one hour and only one hour to speak and you know we certainly would like to hear from the panel members they've come with you know a lot of experience and sharing their perspective um also we like to hear some um uh of the questions uh from the floor so that uh where we can we would like to take them on uh where we can't we would like to you know suggest that uh you could check in with the various zones that we still have uh for the rest of today uh till six o'clock or tomorrow um via the same um vcf link otherwise you know to write into ibf um so just wanted all of you to know and not to go away disappointed if your questions cannot be answered by the panel today um because of the short time i thought i would do a quick round of introduction of the panel members apologetically you know you might not do justice for their very well deserved illustrious uh careers but clearly in the interest of time uh we i i'll do a quick round um also i i would you know appeal to the panel members do share your experiences because it is the experiences your experiences current and the past and also how you look forward into the future that will help many of the participants who have delved in to listen to each one of you i'm sure they are out there whether it be looking for jobs or other opportunities could be attachments traineeship and so on so forth so there are many permutations so your encouragement is very important for them um okay um just in alphabetical order i'll i'll start with alex alex is the senior vice president and team head of talent acquisition in dbs bank his work is aligned to technology and operations group he's an experienced talent advisor and with more than 25 or so years of experience started his career in engineering research and development dot com as well dot com startups and real estate investment before he moved into executive search and talent area alex has also worked in various countries outside of singapore that includes the uk middle east and australia i move on um lawrence go uh is our next panelist uh he's the md of group technology and operations in uob lawrence hosts two portfolios one is a coo and he's responsible for global technology operations strategies and that includes managing i.t investments for the uob group he is also head of group infrastructure platform services and oversees the develop the delivery of operations of all it infrastructure and platforms across the group next we have julie way leeway is head of technology china's engagement and experience of standard chartered bank leeway has more than 19 years of experience working across the apec banking industry she has extensive technical and information security knowledge strategic planning that drives positive business outcomes levy aspires to continue learning always she promotes relationships internally and across and do a lot of mentoring and getting people to move progressively through their careers and obviously last but not least we have kensi tan uh tessie and i happen to uh be alumni of deutsche so um tennessee is currently the executive director in jp morgan asset and wealth management um she looks after change mobilization of this uh business area tennessee heads up intelligent automation center of excellence for awm globally as well so often time as the center of excellence whenever there are visitors coming through um you can see her you know being uh the the key person and really encouraging the uh the aspiration of uh centers of excellence here in singapore um tennessee also drives operations transformation as part of internal private bank data and digital strategy prior to this she was with corporate investment banking and she has led large scale transformation programs she also held a variety of roles including product manager of jpm platform client relationship for ops tennessee is a very strong advocate for the people agenda so um without much uh further ado i'd like to actually request each panel member to share with us about the new opportunities and the skill sets that are in demand currently especially in the area of banking technology and ops and in your remit and if you have observations in a broader you know area within banking do share with us so maybe we start off with alex hi good afternoon everybody i guess i'm between your and potential dinner plans and all but i hope this session will be useful i mean if you look at today's world right um the high demand skills would definitely be in the area of data because we live in a data driven world today whether it is is it in market research or in decision making or even in predictive analysis right and then if we talk about data analytics there are also three main areas where you got your descriptive prescriptive and predictive as well i mean basically in layman's term is what happened right what do we know what might happen and what can we do or what should we be doing about it so all this is definitely based on what data we can gather and therefore if you look at the relevant skills um like a dbs we are looking for data engineers data analysts like my colleague earlier also mentioned about all the other data scientists that we're hiring right but not to forget the you know traditional full stack engineers software developers because it's very important when we are on a digital transformation journey we need to know where we were why did the bank invest in that core banking system so the why would then enable us to then transform accordingly because the purpose of the systems that we invested in are not going to change overnight we still need to be able to keep customer records we still need to be able to deliver transaction services to our customers so the why we bought the or we invested in certain technology in the past is important so if today you find yourself as a mid-career person saying that you know i was born on the days of kobold pascal and fortune 77 what relevance am i today right i think it's very still very relevant because the algorithms behind your thinking the way you think is still very important um i always like to say that sometimes this the most innovative solution is actually the simplest so we're looking for people who can invent and simplify right because if technology makes things so complicated that you can't even step foot into what you want to do uh it's not good technology in my view so i think that's where we are we're looking for creative people innovative people if you have the skill set to learn and be curious then definitely that would help so i mean in dbs we have a myriad of roles that we're covering uh if you go to our career site or even our virtual career booth you will see that there's a lot of things and i think we will cover that later after this so maybe on the next speaker thank you alex i think that um you know uh resonates with me as an individual who's not uh that young fresh out of school um you know uh that we need not be afraid of uh the some of the changes in the technology area some of the the you know programs and so on and even software engineers and so on is something that is transitioning but we still require in addition to the data analytics world so uh moving on uh lawrence would you like to share with us from your perspectives what might be some of the new opportunities or skills you see currently happening in the financial services industry sure thank you leiman and good afternoon to everybody so it's my pleasure to be with you on this fire chat um so i think it's a very relevant topic to be discussing probably at the close of this two day session and i must say that what alex has shared really is somewhat the core of what we are looking for now if you look at the banking industry and every banks is undergoing digital transformation we are creating new experiences for our customers in terms of how they access their funds how they can do their transactions how they can avail a loan we are creating all those digital experiences for them that if they don't feel comfortable they can also come to the branch and then when they come to the branch the experience should be transparent it should be what we call the omni channel experience where it doesn't matter whether you prefer the digital channel or prefer the physical channel it should be there the same way all right so for for you guys who are thinking about joining uh the banking industry i think it's a fabulous time to put to be doing it right and i think it's about where uh maybe banking is going to become sexy again okay i mean at one point in time people were you know joining all the startups and and thinking that maybe that's the place to go but i think now with these disruptions some of the new digital banking licenses are coming up where you see that a lot of startups wants to become banks they want to become financial institutions they want to be providing money to to help people we are in the right industry okay so if you understand data if you know how data can help our customers uh if you understand customer experiences how you can design a good journey for customers if you understand technology and how technology can enable a bank to actually provide the correct experiences and financial services then i think you are in the right place and i really encourage you to then explore this industry thank you lawrence um i mean certainly um this um you know um transition of going almost a full cycle from where we were uh to um you know using technology and digitalization in the banking world is um has brought us to a new front and um on that note actually i like to turn to leeway to share with us her experience and what might be new opportunities and skills in her area in the channels area which uh in in standard chartered bank uh she is focusing on thank you let me over to you yeah thank you lemon uh good afternoon to everybody um in fact i think alex and lawrence all bring to a very common point there was this um joke that was circulating in fact i is circulating around the internet i'm not sure some of you let's see he say who lead your company this digital transformation is it your ceo your cto or covet 19 so so i i think in this time in this kind of climates right when when when the pandemic hit us the things changes or honestly the digitization transformations that lawrence mentioned has actually escalated and suddenly you see that everybody is working from home and even payments if you talk about payments i go to hawker center the uncle says hey can you please scan this and do your payment don't give me cash so there's a whole lot of changes that goes on with this pandemic and the transformations that comes along with it um yeah alex mentioned about data analytics we are transforming we have engineering uh kind of role that's available or being in if even open up to to to um in the market so we ourselves in fact um banking is not hard to understand because we ourselves are a consumer of it yeah and when lawrence talk about experiences i mean the experience space for channels we talked a lot about mapping out customer journey delighting customers in the way that they use those digitals and being you know uh when the fintech now wanting to come back to the banking to even you know um applying for licenses to go digitalize to go banking i i think there's a whole lot of new space whole lot of um creativity is just gonna come in so i'll say really i think it's a well i'm sad to say about the pandemic but yet it's also another opportunity kind of space that's being opened up um like you know being creative being innovative i think this is something that we are also looking for in the candidates and is no longer structures in the uh like when you i think what alex mentioned you know a cobo programmer i was a global programmer before and you just need to reschedule skills yourself and you it still works the same because that that mindset of yours is already ingrained so definitely i think it's an exciting time there's a lot of opportunities available and really i will say that banking is no longer the same yeah we are a step up in terms of not the traditional banking anymore your teller is no longer a teller in a bank like what the old traditional way is is actually moved yes she's shifted so there's a lot of transformation going and i think yeah there's definitely a lot of exciting roles available thank you leeway thank you for for encouraging us this way on to tennessee tennessee uh you cover change mobilization in asset and wealth management um also uh intelligent automation center of excellence maybe you can share with us a little bit about the scope where you i mean it sounds very new to me as well uh in what you're doing perhaps you can shed and enlighten us a bit more in this area definitely um so hi everybody this is tennessee from jpmorgan in fact when i was being introduced about my title i just feel that there's probably a lot of lingo in my title that people may not be familiar with and for those that have been around in the financial services industry you know that getting their acronyms right getting the lingo right is probably the first step to communicate just demystifying what the center of excellence means as well as intelligent automation in the last couple of years i think some of you may have heard the center of excellence popping up so this is a new terminology going around where capabilities are formed and this is a group of people that specialize in a specific capability the robotics data analytics blockchain so this is where they lead the best practices they roll out the best tools and they help to roll up the capability in the organization so that's a very quick summary of center of excellence what i do on a day-to-day basis is an area called intelligent automation so this area covers things like robotics process automation in fact um i joined the panel session earlier on i heard the panelists in the last call talking about robotics automation as one of the key themes that is coming up in recent years so this is what i do i drive robotics process automation within the business and i roll out other kind of low code automation that empowers users business users with tools to drive their own automation and in fact leiman i would say that if you just look at new roles as a topic my role did not exist six years ago in fact you know for prevent jp morgan intelligent automation was a term that came up in the last probably six to seven years so this is where the thinking behind it is that automation is not in a job of a technology partner so in us driving transformation and us driving automation it is the job of all the business units at jpmorgan that should be accountable so the idea behind it is that each business unit needs to drive their own change and automation and what my team is responsible is to equip them with tools that are friendly tools that allows them to model their business process tools that allow them to do a data analysis and getting insights into their business data and from their drive their own automation so that's what i do um as a center of excellence driving the road out the build of this tools to all the business users and i think that's a key point that i do want to highlight to this group that yes there's a lot of new roles out there but at the same time it is also about pushing new technologies to existing people who has got he business knowledge because more than often all of us knows that if you are given a right to do your job you can be much more productive and you can be given best results rather than you translating your automation requirements to a third party and the third party may just understand 50 of it and come back with a lot of questions and gaps so this is the thinking behind it i would say that just moving to the second part of the question what are some of the qualities we look for definitely um people with strong domain knowledge it does not mean that if you are in financial services for a long time you don't quote i don't know python you know i won't be able to cope with the future that is not the thinking behind it they come with strong domain knowledge they come with strong functional knowledge and what we are trying to do here is to give them and teach them a new tool so that they can apply insights into their own data so they they know the domain knowledge they know what are the factors that influence a predictive outcome so that's the thinking behind it training up users getting them certified teaching them new tools which allows them to drive automation so an inquisitive my uh openness is what we look for in fact in some of the users that i've seen um you know surprisingly the users with zero coding background they probably are the best in terms of adopting such tools and skills of the future so i do want to give a shout out that for those who doesn't quote traditionally it does not mean that you need to start coding having a strong domain background will allow you to pick up some of the skills of the future much faster than the rest so hopefully that demystify what i do yes certainly does um i'm just wondering whether the other kind of members have any um additional points to what uh tiny has said and likewise for some of your fellow panel members oh okay good well um thanks uh tensei i do not um you know uh knowledge is is very important in terms of um the acquisition it could be new knowledge it could be uh transformational knowledge um um i see some questions uh popping up so instead of answering one by one i kind of like uh start to cluster them uh one is uh someone in the mid careers uh around 40ish and then there's another uh request coming through um people in that age range uh how easy is it for them to transition um and pivot in terms of their attitudes and mindsets um you know given the first round of uh um uh comments about the type of roles that we might have so i drove into the panel members if you could just jump in and then share a little bit from your own perspective so yeah i guess you know for somebody in your 40s you've got maybe uh 15 to 20 years of working experience um i mean my main advice to be prepared to pivot you have to be flexible to learn something new but you should also leverage on your past experience i'm not sure which area you're in in which field but let's say for example you win logistics you could be a subject matter expert to a fintech who wants to serve the logistics sector because at the end of the day the domain knowledge itself is also really important so while you may not have the technical skills as tenzi mentioned earlier but you have that domain experience the project management skills to actually then mentor people around about your industry there's a big drive into healthcare as well so maybe you were in manufacturing for healthcare products or something like that it's something that you could still take to whichever job you go to because of the focus uh in the different areas that we're going into so i mean even real estate today you know we're talking about smart buildings we're talking about how do you you know collect rent things like that from a traditional standpoint how do you then digitize it you may not have that technical capability to do it but you know that if you could create how would you do that so i think the most important thing is that can you have that open mindset that learning mindset to be able to then apply your past experience so again it goes back to you know the way you treat data what did you know what would you need to know in order to then move this forward i think that would help thank you alex um the other members anyone like to jump into add-on yeah maybe if i just uh chip in a little bit so i'm actually quite new uh to the financial services industry i only joined probably three years uh 10 months ago i was never part of fsi all right so you can call me you could call me a mid-career switch as well so you know at that point in time when you join the financial services industry and uh you know like what leeway says right we are all customers of banks we we know financial services but when you get into the bank you learn about a lot of the controls you learn about what are the controls that are necessary that are very important that cannot be violated right those are the things that i think every one of us can learn but as an individual coming in i would say you will roughly know you know if you're in retail banking you will know it what is important is to have really the growth mindset be willing to learn be willing to sort of roll up your sleeve a little bit you know plug into the things understand why why is it necessary to do step one step two step three right and it's not about coding uh it's not about the design but it's about designing uh with the controls right to be in there and if you sort of understand that and i guess if uh you are late 40s or mid 40s and you already have those experiences then it's about how you then harness the younger team together to explain to them uh why is it important to follow some of the design that is around the controls i think that is important all right and and if you are pivoting into i would say a real technology delivery role then i would say a lot of the technology delivery now is uh what i call on the front end okay because for all the banks the product processor the core systems nobody wants to touch them anymore okay very hard to touch no business case but the the difference uh in all the banks competing is all in the front end channels the digital channels so if again you you you are exposed to a number of platforms that all the banks uh provide and you have sort of an idea hey this button that i clicked there very useful uh this display that they showed me very interesting right if you can harvest that and you can form a point of view then i think you you can come in and really contribute uh very quickly and fairly easily that's my advice thank you i think that's a quite uh interesting uh lawrence um you know for someone who is newer to the banking sector um to speak about um you know how how does it work uh to to adapt leeway anything to add and tenzi sure i i think really um you know open mindset being agile in your in your own way and continuous learning even myself i find myself i need to learn uh the banking industry or even technologies is constant there's constant new things that comes up there are things that that changes so at one stage facebook is is the in thing but now you have telegram you have it it's just you need to keep up yeah it's never status call that you know this is where you are then yeah you just say that it's not that way you continuous learning so even in at whichever age that you are i have parents who are learning how to do video chat with me uh you know at this stage of even at their age they are being i would say the covet probably forced them to learn it but but yes they are learning they are willing to learn so it's regardless of where and which age you're at is really constantly being open mindsets and being adaptive to the environment sure thank you yes i don't know so yes the biggest the biggest gap that i see so far when speaking with many of the managers is that there are two profiles of people that have seen the one profile is business users with very strong domain knowledge but they don't know how to apply all the future technology to their area but they know their business very well they run it for years and years they know they can smell the market they know how things would move the second type of talent that they see are people with strong technology skills so they have the data scientists you have somebody who does robotics very well so those are the second group of people and i think the key challenge here is how do we mirror both groups of people together and just back to that question earlier on in fact if you like i would feel that almost the 40-plus population is the right group to bring both sets together they know the industry they know what is risks and controls because this may not be a terminology that you know many of the fresh graduates may be familiar with what is risk what does risk do what does controls do so this group of people they know how the industry works they have got domain experience and if they are able to step further to say based on the emerging technologies that i see in the various dimensions how do i apply it to my business area and transform it i think that is the key here it's not about the bright shiny toys out there that gives the greatest glamour but i think it's about which of this technology out there can i truly apply and how do i apply it to transform my business so i feel that that's a great opportunity for this group of people if they have yet to discover that this is really a gap that they can fulfill okay thank you for for all your insights um and feedback i i have uh something quite interesting while we are saying hey you know you must have certain um trends or attributes and so on reversing it what is the hardest to find maybe think of two three jobs in your respective areas that are hardest to feel and i i do have um someone from uh the participant group asking so putting it the other way one of the hardest to fill roles and to see whether that individual can fail and so i have an array of people who said that they have management consulting background they have been banking before um different areas of banking they are generally um open to digital literacy but how do they get there so basically you have some openings how would you get these people in and maybe you can just have an open dialogue on that alex you want to give it a shot um i think it's about baby steps as well i mean if let's say for example your career finance professional accountant by training and you don't have that tech experience but i think where you could then you know pivot yourself is to move into something still finance related so it could be automation in the in the area of ar you know uh um in terms of uh payments ar and all that um you can look at different areas payroll services and stuff like that within the bank because you kind of expect overnight for someone to say hey i did a course and i'm now a subject matter expert right but i think the important thing is that you need to really leverage on your past experience because you've maybe people in this segment 40 50 years old you've worked 20 30 years in a certain area don't don't say that you know it wasn't useful to my earlier statement right you should definitely use that as a case study and ask yourself how can this be applicable to ai because you know exactly how things are done on even a cyclical basis so a lot of our ai uh engineers will tell you if it's repeatable we can definitely you know learn it and get it done so how do you then become that subject matter expert and that advisor so uh for those consultants in the crowd definitely very useful because uh dbs in particular like people who can look strategically because uh we can just hire tactical people people who can program people can code but how about the use cases the the strategic portion of it because don't build just for the sake of building because the old mindset is if i build it people will come that sort of thing or people will use that service um you know i built this e-commerce engine and someone will use it but actually that's not true because there are you know thousands of e-commerce engines out there why would they choose yours so you need to understand from what lawrence also said as a customer right what am i looking for so you need to put yourself in your own shoes literally and then say what can i do to leverage this in now in order to answer one of the questions also about how do i get an interview if you've been in industry 25 30 years please leverage on your contacts i'm sure you know someone who works in the bank right someone who can vouch for you and say hey yeah i know this guy worked with them before like tennessee and lyman you all used to work together so there's that connection there so use your relationships in the industry because we are in a people business it's not just about ones and zeros it's about connecting the dots and sometimes the dots are people so i think that would help in getting the foot in the door so i mean i hope that answers some of your questions thank you thank you for for the insight uh alex yeah does anybody want to jump in and uh you know um add on yeah maybe i'll i'll chip in a little bit um so if if you're preparing to come for an interview um you know there are lots of schemes out there today right skills future the ibf we have got lots of programs that are in there and if you are looking really for a job in technology there are few that will not run away uh too quickly you you can learn about being a cloud engineer as an example right and there are courses out there aws google you can get onto it and you can learn about it data ai machine learning they are all there right and then full stack developers if you want to become a full stack developer again pick a language uh there are a lot of courses out there learn about it and then be prepared to talk about it when you come to an interview all right because if you if you want to come to interview and you have never touched any of the technology and you you are new to the financial industry i think doesn't give you an edge right but if you say look i've spent my time i've learned about a area and then now i'm here for the interview i'm interested i want to practice what i've learned you're not going to be the expert on day one but you are prepared to learn because you got the basics and you got the foundation i think people will look at it very positively and they will give you a chance now to answer one of the first questions that lyman was asking right what what is the hardest things to feel in the bank in my view data scientists right because everybody claims i'm a data scientist i've i've done you know data mining and then i've done data analytics and then now i'm a data scientist but actually very hard to find data scientists okay because these scientists are supposed to be super phd they learn about all those things they can you know analyze trends that you and i haven't even seen but you know you filter through so many people say oh okay you need some data mining okay you did some analytics you know how to use this too but by no means are you a data scientist okay so i think that's one of those things that are hard to do now if you feel that it is all those things that you want to aspire to okay then start the journey pick up some courses do some training and then get get a good internship or maybe just get a pcp attachment to one of the banks start from there and then maybe you can work your way up because i think those are the new technology emerging areas that i would say will not go away in the short term yes thank you uh lawrence and i i think to that point i saw someone quite young asking whether they could get into the banking sector in this area and so i i think this is also an encouragement factor for the younger people uh not just for the um you know um mid careers but as you enter into your early careers those are also areas that you can aspire um to get into and and start developing yourself in terms of knowledge and experience yeah thank you how about you leeway anything to add on uh i think like what let's say it's really baby steps you know to to pivot yourself into the roles that you're looking for and i i couldn't agree more with lawrence about data scientists i have a staff who actually quit his job and and went to really study mathematics going into data scientists he's now doing his phd so he has that passions yeah so i think it's really true learn about it go and study about it and now he is even he's becoming a teacher himself to teach so so this is he invests in himself in the area that he's interested in and and really going to it yeah okay now that's wonderful actually on this note um i i wanted to ask uh each one of you whether you have one or two stories of people who have pivoted and transition successfully um you know it could be in this area of technology it could be some other areas um would you share those a couple of stories with us um as to how they have transitioned what did they do and how successful uh they are or what what contributed to their success because we know stories like this uh really could be um very inspiring uh for job seekers as well as for those who um eventually if immediately might not get that perfect job or be successful in interviews but can look for you know uh be it attach and train or some of the programs uh that are uh you know now uh being offered in the uh financial services sector so maybe tenzi maybe we we i i just asked whether you would know of a couple of stories to share okay i would say that lemon i have quite a bit of stories to share but they are speak in general for my team and i think it's close to my heart um because i run the center of excellence for intelligent automation if i look across the spectrum of people in my team it's actually quite interesting that there is no default profile of what is a successful candidate in a sense of excellence so for example some of my team members came from technology background so they come from strong skills in terms of coding robotics process automation and you know this is where they want to know more about the business they want to work closely with them to drive changes yep so this is on technology background some of my users came from an operations background so they're frustrated doing regulatory reporting they're frustrated with transaction processing because it's manual lots of client queries coming through and this is where some of the operations users decide to become tech so i decided i want to learn some of the tools i want to remove the processes in my area that has no joy and this is where they have also pick up a tool in order to transform and automate their processes so those are some of the profiles there are also some people in my team that come from risk and control some people came from consulting audit so i would almost say that there is no standard profile of what defines a successful candidate but close to my heart i do see two or three individuals here how did they successfully pivoted themselves it's because in the day-to-day processing they probably come from operations team they have a lot of manual processes every day and you know there's a lot of overtime when volume increase they are unable to cope and how they successfully pivoted themselves you know we introduced them to a set of tools we got them trained up to say that these are tools that you can learn to automate your process and you can drive the changes yourself we help them along in the journey work with them get them automated in their first process and after that they become so proficient in the tools that they start to teach other people how to do it so i've seen a lot of examples like that you know you never think it was and it's probably their first they've never done programming so this is their first use case learning a tool getting rid of a pain that themselves they themselves face day to day and this is where the strong motivation to want to make sure that it happens um i felt that if i look at your questioning holistically that you know these are the stories where it always starts with a problem you know there is a problem somebody is feeling frustrated somebody wants to solve a problem and they see an opportunity and putting the right solution with a good support model i think that would help the individual succeed in the journey but almost i also feel that the individual shouldn't be shy about it you know don't be shy that how do i do this you know don't be shy about leveraging a forum a public forum and shouting out hey guys i've got a problem can anyone help me because traditionally many of us may not learn things in that manner we may be a little bit shy about asking for help publicly in forums you know chat problems but these are the new ways to build community of practice this other way to strengthen your technology skills so this is what i truly feel that these are some of the stories that i hear where people don't have technology background they pick up the tools they're seen as digital savvy now and driving transformation does that that thank you uh can say that's really um very good to know it's it's almost like you know all of us are hardwired in a certain way we are inhibited uh we face issues day to day especially if you are in operations you know you you can cry like crazy but tomorrow you still pick up the same problem and work at it and then now it's like hey try and get that problem away i i'm going to give you some tools and and help you so a lot also um depends on the individual uh but also the organization giving them that opportunity to to to work at it actually you also mentioned a good point i do want to say that a lot of success cases i've seen it's also where the managers has got strong support you know they allow the individual some time off to learn the truth um you know they make sure that this has been recognized that is part of their kpi and performance because so much that the passionate individual can bring an advance if there's no good support model right yes yes and and i think a lot of the gallup survey also showed that where the employee gets very engaged and motivated in doing work and and being innovative um you know a lot counts on the manager i mean com compensation is one thing but it doesn't keep that person that motivated yeah thank you for sharing how about the others would you share your stories that you know of i actually just want to uh mention what tennessee said about diversity reminds me about how we you know structure our scrum teams because uh as you know agile and scrum teams we're looking for high performing teams and what makes them successful actually is a diversity of experiences within that so when you can bring them together and get aligned in terms of the goals and get them you know to appoint the familiar with the same set of tools that you're using uh the team actually ends up moving very fast and and they can move things to production so i think that's good to say you know we're willing to find people with different skill sets in different areas but it's important you need to you know uh i guess get that opportunity to be able to know where you fit in and sometimes it's it's a bit of a fuzzy logic right where you go in and you try and figure it out so i um this is some advice i would give my own children being a parent is that take the first job that comes along right so to answer the fresh question you know you're looking to enter the investment management space what should you do um pick up whichever role the banks offer you i think most banks will have a graduate associate program or get in as a wealth planning manager first understand how banking actually works on a basic level it's like flipping burgers and mcdonald's right before you go up to management i think that's still a very valid example today so i think that's where where i just wanted to chime in on that yeah thank you alex yeah lawrence yeah maybe i'll i'll do a plug for ibf uh we do have a technology for financial industry program tfip which is really a pcp so last year for example we took in 15 participants on the program two of them actually are cloud engineers in my infrastructure and platform team and in the program they actually get sent for formal structure training right so we actually put them away get properly trained and then after that for the next uh nine months in a year they go on to the on the job training now the good thing about this program at least for this batch was they got hit by the kovit right so when everybody got asked to send home the few engineers that were coming up from the training and were working very closely your team were actually chipping in to try and make sure that the infrastructure that we have built up can scale all right so we we pivoted back into the public cloud created uh solutions that people can work from home right all because we also got this set of engineers that we have actually uh took in and tried to train okay and i think it benefits both ways because from the individual it becomes a baptism of fire you know you nothing beats a crisis like you go through a crisis and you learn wow this is actually how you you need to quickly learn and get it over and done with right and then for the organization because we also took the step to make sure that we invest in the people then when when the time comes for them to contribute it is there all right so never uh never underestimate the opportunities to really contribute in a a crisis right and i would say again joining the bank at this juncture a very good move and there are lots of programs right uh that are being rolled out now so take your pick get your focus right and then i'm sure uh you know you can find a good uh place where you can then build your career thank you laurence uh thank you for flying the flag for ibf um there is one related to this there's one question i saw somebody uh who is age 55 and asking whether realistically would would we or any fi that we know of hire someone at age 55 i would dare say to jump in to say that i have most recently in fact today come across someone in the almost mid 55 uh being hired um it's in a pseudo fi area so to that individual i wanted to say there are chances maybe um you just got to keep trying and working at it um but i think um generally um there are opportunities out there so the encouragement is there for you to keep looking leeway i don't know whether um in scb uh you you could share with us in terms of diversity uh age-wise how does it come across certainly certainly in fact i was sharing with foreign recently i hired someone that's older than me so um age is not a the problem yeah it's really more the open mindset and the person that came in to contribute to the organizations and being adaptive being a team player so so um honestly i mean diversity has to be there for the organization as well because when you reach certain age you will have certain wealth of experience in your life as well that will contribute to the organizations and it's not about some how old are you is is how how your your open mind your attitude towards the jobs that yeah yeah after and you are working in it yeah so so i'll say is um we for for me i i don't look at the uh um age as a problem but it's more the attitudes than your your what you're bringing into the organizations thank you thank you for that uh leeway um certainly i also have another question um you know asking um hold on a second um there's a um someone who's got corporate banking experience um and wondering how digitalization or technology can be used to improve the business and if this individual has the strong corporate banking dominion knowledge a domain knowledge would would you guys hire or if you are the hiring manager [Music] you know for a job in the corporate banking area or technology area anybody well maybe maybe i'll i'll i'll try uh to answer i think uh a lot of times uh if if it's gonna be a mid career i don't think it is sort of the really hard skills that matter a whole lot a lot of it like what alex talk about alignment of the values of the person to the bank the maturity of the person uh the ability of the person to actually work as a team because you are never gonna be an individual contributor in that sense the ability to build relationships all right so a lot of the softer side i i would say is gonna be probably a little bit more important unless you really want to start like starting as a uh day right but if you are now just mid career and you completely switch out never touch technology before never in financial services before and now you suddenly switch to technology switch to fsi then perhaps the first thing to do is get some good grounding on technology all right because if you do not appreciate and understand technology then very hard for you uh to really move uh very much further okay and if this is where you think that maybe in in your uh career life there's still maybe 20 25 years left i think it's a worthwhile investment to then put your minds to it to really pick up some of the technology all right and it doesn't need to be hardcore technology right you can start off with a little bit of the data analytics just understanding how do you visualize uh some of the data how do you use the tools to mine the data how do you then use language right to really decipher the data depending on the area you want pick your choice and then you dedicate yourself to it because i think you know at that level you still got a bit of runway that you can then go and develop yourself yeah i think i want to add in the answer about the corporate banking side um yeah i think uh this is a plug for dbs obviously we recently used blockchain to digitize you know our letters of credit and some of the global transaction services i think that came out in the news right we're one of the first few in the world to actually do that so this is where the corporate bank in a you know traditional um b2b kind of environment can actually contribute to us that's some of the things that we actually are looking for that skill set that knowledge so to my earlier point again the knowledge you've accumulated can make you the subject matter expert because we literally only in last you know two years only moved away from paper lcs right letter of credits to to digitizing it and again to uh to to elite based point is the uh the covit helped right to to accelerate that recently um so i think and and to some of the other questions i know this are popping up it's like where do i what courses can i do to pick up this skill set because you might be in corporate banking and then you're asking yourself how do i pivot um i actually came across skills framework right in uh the the wsg sites it's very useful they've got 1400 different um i think roles in the banking industry and they actually have attached courses on how you can become a data analyst how you can become a data scientist or what th there are certain courses that you can look for for so so for those who want to learn um i think skills framework is great because the government's also given us money right in uh your skills future so use that the money is there take those courses it will actually also give you an idea or even within your own current industry there are many skills that are actually tech related uh or sorry rather many courses that attack related we didn't say the logistics sector the real estate sector and all that there are also data analyst courses there especially in the areas of marketing so uh i definitely do encourage you to go to visit the skills future website as well uh under the skills framework right yes thanks for that i likes and also ibf also has uh a lot of resources uh in the skills framework uh for the fs uh financial services sector i think uh if i may add um it's perhaps important that an individual must do his or her own research a bit more uh you need to literally sit down and think about where my some of the the areas that you need to pro uh doing some more research some fact-finding and some information and knowledge uh instead of you know wondering where you go that information will actually help you plan a roadmap for yourself um there is also the ivf uh careers connect that you can uh write to and also uh we we do have the booths um in in the career zone that you can uh check in with some of our career advisors to get some more tips um [Music] you know beyond the two days then you know you can always write to us as well where you know some of our coaches can also uide you along um i i realized that we are first coming to uh five o'clock i just wanted uh to uh round uh this um uh discussion up uh with uh perhaps um you know having issue one of you uh just share uh one or two advice that you would have um maybe we can start off with leeway one final thought or one or two final thoughts i think um i always go by be people be brave believe in yourself and don't be afraid to try don't be afraid to to learn and and really open up your mindset yeah so that's what i i'm being added to to adapt to the current situations where the world evolved where the banking involved whether industry evolved and and certainly to be resiliency to be resilient to what is coming yeah so this is what i will say thank you leeway kenzie what about from you i i don't want to also try to answer the previous question because i didn't put in my thoughts on that i almost want you to say one or two advice that i'll give to everybody is that transformation starts in your current role so regardless of what role you're in nobody is born to be a data scientist so don't start by saying that i'm a product controller today and i want to be a data scientist tomorrow this is how i want to chart my career i almost feel that you need to have the mindset transformation starts in your current role now look at the current role that you're performing in the financial services industry how can you make it better how can you improve your current role do you understand the trends and the threats that are going on that is going to impact your current growth start from there and this is where people should move because i've seen a lot of people who said okay tennessee i want a data analytics role give me a data analytics role and my advice to the individual is you are capable of performing data analytics in your current role the reason is because the financial services industry is nothing but a data industry we don't have a physical product out there every day everything that passes through every day it's nothing but data so regardless of what role and what functions you are in there's tons of data going through every day day to day so think about how you can perform analysis on those data how can you look critically at your own processes your job function and say how can i make it better and how can i cope with some of the future tricks that is coming so through those baby steps this is where the individuals will really learn is this really the right career for me do i really want to be a full-time data analytics role before they even set their mind and say hey i want to be a data scientist so that would be my advice for everybody transformation starts with your current goal thank you tennessee um that's a very good advice for many of the me careers and at one stage i was also going through um and and this the the so-called change or um how to accelerate and transform myself and that resonates with me as well so i i just want to you know call to all those uh who who are on on you know listening in uh to take the advice lawrence what about you do you have one or two uh final advice uh to give to the participants yeah sure um so don't don't give up uh i think there's lots of opportunities out there uh use all the training that is available uh to your maximum but also discover yourself what is the interest that you have for yourself and really adopt a growth mindset okay because if you invest in yourself and you try to learn and try to experience it try to do it yourself it stays with you and then when you try to apply it at work it will be a multiplier effect that you can then experience so i hope you are going to be successful and be able to then change uh to a career in financial services thank you thank you laurence yeah um once you acquire the new knowledge and you have the the the mindset the agility and so on to go forth no one can take that away from you and you can only develop further from there alex yeah i mean we are in the world of open banking now right so i think the key word there is open you know have an open mindset have an open attitude uh challenge the status quo right because you want a change for the better not just for whichever organization work for but for yourself so uh one advice is definitely learn and be curious uh that would definitely help you and more importantly call a friend you never know you know because as a recruiter i always find that referrals are the strongest channel for us and um similarly if you're a job seeker you'll find that a referral into a job is also probably one of the strongest channels you can use to be successful so you know be open and call a friend yes that definitely i think that's um something that um where we can have good shortcuts uh you know without compromising standards or integrity why not hey yeah guys thank you very much i i just uh want to express you know our deep appreciation uh for your time um um in participating in this panel and giving very good advice um um really from your experience and uh i'm sure the participants go away with with that um you know encouragement from each one of you so alex lawrence leeway tennessee a big thank you on behalf of ibf and for those who are listening in i hope we have answered some of your questions for those of you who wish to know more we we're still open tomorrow we still have an hour to go and then beyond that um do write to ibf if there's any way we can help you with and i wish you all um lots of uh success and perseverance um and all the very best you