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and says he actually finds finance
more interesting due to these data
challenge within finance.
“The idea that the financial
time-series data has a low signal to
noise ratio is widely known,” he ex-
plains. “This makes finance problems
inherently difficult. I find problems
dealing with alpha generation par-
ticularly appealing, as there are many
competing forces in the space and
everyone seems to have their own
view and model of the world.
“To me, that is more interesting
than common problems in the tech
institution invests in data science
and makes data-related work and
products core to their business, then
students will want to work there.
Mentorship and support at a first job
is a huge draw as well.”
The securities services world is
certainly creating more appealing
roles for data scientists and other
technology graduates. The banking
world is looking to implement more
sophisticated technologies into
its operations in line with a shift
towards focusing on digitisation and
data analytics. Most custodian banks
“In my team I have two or three people attending courses on
Saturdays and evenings at a polytechnique school.”
PHILIPPE RUAULT,
HEAD OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, BNP PARIBAS
space such as Computer Vision or
Recommender Systems.”
Global Custodian has written
previously about the fight for talent
just within the securities services
industry alone, and the difficulties in
attracting young talent to an industry
very much stuck in its ways. The
battle for data scientists will be no
different.
Despite what Di Amore says about
the work itself, the philosophy of a
banking institution is entirely differ-
ent from your typical Silicon Valley
tech firm, despite a recent push to
reform.
A change in culture – which most
firms do seem to be currently work-
ing on – along with stimulating work
and opportunities, seem to be at the
core of graduates’ needs.
“Students are motivated by inter-
esting problems and companies that
have the proper infrastructure to
support technical data science work,”
explains Fuld Cohen. “If a financial
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Global Custodian
Spring 2018
are now fully invested in innovation
centres and artificial intelligence
projects, enabling them to draw some
of the aforementioned talent to their
business.
Problems that need solving
The good news for students like Di
Amore is that there is a huge oppor-
tunity to make a big difference to
these major companies as they begin
moving from proof of concept to real
use cases.
“The most important requirement
is that there are interesting prob-
lems to solve,” says Di Amore. “The
second most important is that there’s
actually data there, or some mecha-
nism that can be developed to gather
the data.”
Luckily for students such as Di
Amore, there are plenty of problems
in securities services industry which
can be solved by data scientists.
BNP Paribas Securities Services has
taken a two-fold approach in adding
data scientists – recruiting straight
from the best university for the sub-
ject in France, and training its staff
internally. The latter is an approach
that Cisco Systems is now famed for
through its Data Science Certifica-
tion programme, which is open to its
employees of all backgrounds.
“We launched a training pro-
gramme for those people with an
engineering background to them
up-skilled,” says Philippe Ruault,
head of digital transformation at
BNP Paribas.
“In my team I have two or three
people attending courses on Satur-
days and evenings at a polytechnique
school.”
Columbia’s Yao still believes that
financial services has pulling power
when it comes to recruitment, but
adds that the sector is still not one of
the major users of data analytics.
“The financial services industry
still attracts the best and brightest
talents,” he says. “That kind of phe-
nomenon is always there in financial
services.
“The space is changing, it used to
be long gruelling hours, but now
places like Goldman Sachs are com-
peting against the likes of