A severe shortage of computer skills in SA has left its major banks fighting over a limited pool of people with the skills they need to upgrade technology platforms and keep pace with changing customer demands and competition from new rivals.
The country's four biggest lenders - Absa, Standard Bank, Nedbank and FirstRand - said it was hard to access the skills they need to rapidly digitise - a response to growing demand for online and mobile banking and the arrival of a host of digital-only banks trying to steal their customers with slick apps and cut-price fees.
All four said they had taken a number of measures to address the shortage, including changing their hiring strategies, implementing, for example, "speed-dating-style" events where large numbers of candidates undergo short interviews in one go, and developing training programmes.
But in some cases lenders said it still took months to hire and they were paying ever-rising salaries to win talent. The problem is particularly acute for positions that did not exist just a few years ago, such as cloud engineers, said Standard Bank group chief information officer Alpheus Mangale.
Paying high premium
He said that in September last year the bank wanted to hire 12 such engineers to make sure its cloud systems were up and running and to look after their day-to-day upkeep.
"We are probably at about 40% of that because the skills just don't exist in the market," he said. Banks can expect to pay a 20%-30% premium when they do find such skills, he added.
Specialist recruitment agency Acuity Consultants said salaries for software developers had also leapt by up to 30% over the past year. Thando Lukhele, an executive in Nedbank's group technology division, said it could take months to fill roles and the bank paid extra for new hires. Absa and FirstRand's retail unit had similar problems.
The banks' issues highlight how the skills shortage is complicating some of SA's largest companies' ability to compete, making adapting to technological and market changes more time-consuming and costly.
Such skills are in short supply globally, and McKinsey has estimated demand for technological skills will rise 55% by 2030 based on analysis focusing on the US and Western Europe.
But Yossi Hasson, a co-founder at non-profit technology school WeThinkCode, said the issue was magnified in SA by problems in public education, limited access to the internet and computers and the fact that those with skills are often taken overseas by global companies. The banks, many of which sponsor WeThinkCode alongside companies ranging from news organisations to Nando's, have tried a range of other steps to attract or develop talent.
Mangale said Standard Bank had created training programmes with Amazon and Microsoft as well as internal programmes and partnerships with universities or technical schools to retrain existing staff.
"The use of technology and how you leverage all the emerging tech is really at the heart of how organisations will win or lose in the market," he said.
Reuters
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