19th Annual Global CEO Survey: Key talent findings in the financial services industry

Financial services (FS) is grappling with huge and disruptive upheaval. Insurance, asset management and banking and capital markets (BCM) organisations can’t afford to be complacent in the face of so much change. But the shake-up also opens up significant opportunities for reinvigorating growth and re-engaging with customers, employees and society as a whole. Implementing effective people practices is one of the keys to achieving this.

Survival and success within this new marketplace demands people who are creative, digitally savvy and can adapt quickly to constant change. The search for new opportunities and changing nature of FS organisations also calls for people with the cultural insight to work in fast-growth markets and lead more diverse and multi-generational organisations. And while your business is facing all these new and increasing demands, familiar talent shortages in areas ranging from insurance actuarial services to operational risk and compliance in banking haven’t gone away.

Financial Services CEOs are most concerned about the potential threats a lack of availability of skills (70%) and speed of technological change (70%) pose to the growth prospects of their organisations - ahead of Cyber threats (69%), reveals this PwC report.

Moreover, findings from the report, ‘Shifting Demands, Competing Priorities: Adjusting to the New Talent Realities in Financial Services’, which are based on a PwC survey of 490 FS CEOs, and forms part of the firm’s 19th annual Global CEO Survey of over 1,40o CEOs in 83 countries, show FS CEO’s confidence in the prospects for the global economy, their own growth potential and plans for increases in headcounts have all declined since last year’s survey.

Beyond the immediate economic uncertainty, FS faces the disruptive impact of new technology, regulation, changing customer expectations and competition from FinTech.