The Fintech Talent Development,Competency, and Manpower Study

The Fintech Talent Development, Competency, and Manpower Study 44 Technical Readiness and Technical Skill Gaps Fintech professionals should be able to: 1. Frame a business issue that can lend itself to rigorous empirical analysis and inferencing; 2. Master skills to process structured and unstructured data for analysis; 3. Understand and determine validation tests of AI algorithms and techniques that are relevant to the tasks at hand. It is noteworthy that advancement of data science and artificial intelligence will continue to introduce new techniques and tools to the industry. Fintech professionals may not be able to keep themselves up-to-date on every new tool and software. The three core data analytic skills mentioned above are general and transferrable across domains and should help fintech professionals maintain relevant skillsets to cope with the rapid development in data science and AI. Blockchain and DLT Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) provides a platform to support a wide range of business transactions. Originally designed to implement the bitcoin cryptocurrency, hundreds of blockchain standards have emerged over the past decade. Their applications have moved beyond cryptocurrency to trade finance, smart contracts, and digital assets, among many others. Unlike cybersecurity where there is a whole spectrum of universal standards (e.g. encryption) to develop security solutions, the vast number of standards and commercial products of blockchain and DLT at this point stifle talent development as it remains unclear which standards will survive. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is expecting to release its first standards for blockchain technology in 2020-21. ISO/ TC 307, a committee within the ISO, was set up to work on standards around DLT. With the launch of the official standards, it is expected interoperability of systems will improve and this in turn will spur product development based on the standard. This will result in more targeted effort to narrow the skill gap, benefiting the industry as a whole.