Banks' Battle to Secure 'Digital Talent' This Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Banks are making every effort to secure digital talent this year. As banks have collectively emphasized 'platform enhancement,' the importance of digital talent such as developers has grown even more.

According to the banking sector on the 2nd, major banks such as KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, and Woori have reorganized their organizations or started securing talent with the goal of strengthening their platforms. As the change called 'digital transformation' intensifies in the financial industry, the demand for excellent developers and IT technology personnel appears to be increasing.

KB Kookmin Bank reorganized eight divisions?fund services, digital new business, KB mobile authentication, supply chain finance, corporate fund management, corporate banking, institutional sales, and global digital?into a 'DevOps' organization. DevOps is a compound word of software development and operation. It emphasizes communication, collaboration, integration, and automation between system developers and operation experts. KB Kookmin Bank plans to maintain a policy of recruiting external talent to strengthen digital competitiveness in preparation for competition with big tech. In addition, it newly established the 'Digital New Business Headquarters' and appointed executives from the IT industry in each area.

Shinhan Bank plans to significantly reinforce its digital workforce this year. Shinhan Bank recruited about 200 digital personnel through continuous hiring last year and announced plans to continuously hire more than 100 digital-ICT personnel this year as well. A Shinhan Bank official explained, "We plan to accelerate digital transformation through continuous hiring this year."

Hana Bank established the DT (Digital Transformation) Innovation Headquarters within the Digital Retail Group. This is a measure to realize Hana Financial Group's key task of 'Digital First.' Woori Bank also declared its leap to a 'financial platform company' while reorganizing its organization.

The reason banks are focusing on digital talent like this is that the distribution method of financial products is rapidly changing from offline branches to 'non-face-to-face digital' methods. Also, personnel to build the 'MyData business,' which will be actively promoted from this year, are essential. MyData is a service that allows financial consumers to manage financial information from banks, cards, insurance, securities, etc., all at once and receive product recommendations.

Moreover, 'digital competitiveness' is essential in competition with domestic big tech companies such as Naver and Kakao, whose influence in the financial sector is growing. Naver, Kakao, Toss, and others dominate the financial market with easy user interfaces (UI). Compared to big tech companies, where development-related personnel account for 30-50%, the banking sector still lacks IT personnel. An industry insider said, "As banks collectively emphasize 'digital' this year, the atmosphere of focusing on talent recruitment will continue."