TRAINING
and improve the way in which financial service providers conduct their business. This authority will also be
responsible for ensuring the integrity and efficiency of financial
markets and promoting effective financial consumer
education.
In this changing environment, educational institutions offering
qualifications in banking have to respond quickly to adapt their
qualifications to address the new needs of the industry. The
qualifications should require:
• becoming better acclimated to the regulatory climate;
• bolstering risk management practices;
• deploying capital more efficiently;
• innovating across multiple dimensions;
• enhancing customer experience in new ways;
• developing future business leaders.
TRAINING NEEDS IN SOUTH AFRICA’S BANKING
SECTOR
Over the past three decades the financial system has been
going through a phase of major structural change, and the
pace of change seems to be accelerating. The joint influence of
financial liberalisation, breakthroughs in financial know-how
and advances in information technology have ushered in an
era of extraordinary innovation in banking, in both products
and processes.
This growth and structural change in financial activities
on a worldwide scale determines the variety of skills and the
numbers required.
The growth of local commercial banks in recent decades, their
ability to offer competitive salary packages, and product and
process innovations have made the banking sector an attractive
employer to graduates and professionally-qualified applicants.
This is not necessarily the case in all countries. In the UK the
banking sector faces a negative image problem when recruiting.
Retail banking, employers feel, is not a career of choice for
most employees, and is a sector that young people fall into,
rather than actively aspire to. ‘Retail banking faces a hostile
labour market, one in which the sector and its workforce do not
enjoy the status and reputation associated with other sectors.’
(Financial Services Skills Council, UK 2007: 74)
At the high end of the financial-sector skills profile in South
Africa at least three major industries – banking, insurance and
accountancy – compete for the pool of qualified professionals
and managers. Accountancy skills are currently in the highest
demand in sectors that provide and use financial services.
This includes government, regulatory agencies and nonprofit organisations, but the bulk of demand comes from the
private sector. What is not clear is why chartered accountants
are recruited for many positions that could have been filled
by a commerce graduate specialising in, perhaps, treasury
management or risk management.
The demand for skills, particularly among professionals,
professional technicians and the great variety of management
across the banking sector, will continue to increase. It is of
‘At the high end of the
financial-sector skills profile
in South Africa at least three
major industries – banking,
insurance and accountancy
– compete for the pool of
qualified professionals and
managers.’
strategic importance to mend the deficiencies in the South
African education and training system. This includes the
schooling system, and an assessment of the kind of graduates
that higher education is producing.
There is a belief that the rise in graduate unemployment
is a result of inappropriate qualifications and the quality of
education at schools, implying that there are a large number of
functionally illiterate graduates. Some solutions include:
• focusing more on practical aspects of work and work
experience;
• school-leavers should be given better career guidance in order
to match the supply of graduates with the needs of the
economy;
• people with inappropriate degrees should be put on learnership
programmes that bridge the skills gap by supplying learners
with appropriate skills that are demanded in the marketplace;
• partnerships should be set up between educational
institutions and firms to enable more appropriate curriculum
design and collaborative research work (vocational training).
Such models are used with success in Brisbane, Australia, where
students are given real-life, company-based research projects to
complete as part of their courses.
Job growth is not consistent with the increase in the number of
university graduates, and the unemployment crisis is a major
concern for many countries, including South Africa. Yet we
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