The growth of challenger banks has been significant, with many players choosing to focus on the SME market. With the technology landscape continually evolving, the ability of customers to access banking platforms quickly and simply is being enabled. Major tech players, such as Amazon and Google, are capitalising their significant customer bases by offering new/more attractive financial products, enabling additional revenue streams and increased levels of engagement.
It will come as little surprise that Norman Broadbent has seen significant demand for Interim and FTE Finance Professionals with prior exposure to FS regulatory environments. In particular, those with experience of the Fintech sector are in strong demand. Essential core competences include a true understanding of data analytics and the ability to advise on the best, most relevant digital products in the consumer space.
Having engaged with numerous CFOs this last quarter, a high proportion of their time is (unsurprisingly) spent managing costs, revenues, and accurately accounting for lending and assessing risk, etc. Due to regulatory pressure around capital requirements, their time is taken up reporting to investors, regulators, and senior leadership.
Lack of bandwidth aside, recruiting finance professionals with the requisite skills in a rapidly evolving market is challenging.
But it’s not just recruitment ... it’s also the retention of key Talent.
Many of those with the required skills sit within larger institutions. Typically, when Finance Professionals have moved from larger institutions to smaller challenger banks, they often struggle. The infrastructure is smaller and less developed than they are used to, and the teams beneath them are less experienced.
Although many banks have embraced all-things-digital from an outbound perspective, the middle and back office revolution is slow to materialise. This is despite the scope for significant improvement. Many of our FS Clients have utilised Interims to help them drive change, streamline processes, improve efficiencies, and reduce costs. A common area of challenge over the last 6 months, for example, has been around data storage and data analytics. We have detailed below a sample of Interim Finance Professionals we are representing currently, all of whom have significant expertise and penetration in this space within the challenger bank sector that.
If you would like to know more about our expertise, or discuss a specific assignment, please contact Jonathan Stringer from the Interim Finance Officers Practice for an initial confidential discussion on +44 (0) 20 7484 0036 / +44 (0) 7483 015 307 or
jonathan.stringer@normanbroadbentinterim.com