Financial IT is HOT
According to recent U.S government survey, this year Financial and Banking companies are hiring more Information technology (IT) than business graduates. The simple reason is they need to upgrade their information systems and preparing for the changes in technology such as Cloud computing, Software as a Service, and more online banking services. These companies are looking mostly for Information Systems Management (ISM) graduates with good programming skills, knowledge of database and service management to optimize their information systems.
The financial crisis that slowdown this business sector in the past three years is beginning to show some signs of recovering and that triggers strong competition among financial and banking firms. Many are turning to information technology for their advantages According to a spokesman person from IBM: “There are more demand for new technology than we have seen in the past, and this is a very good news for the IT industry.”
At the gathering of over 250 Financial and banking executives represent both large and small firms in Wall Street last month, many expressed that they will spend more on technology, half of them are planning 20 to 30 percent of their budgets on hiring new IT graduates in the next five years to upgrade their systems and move rapidly into more online services, especially in cloud computing and mobile computing.
According to these executives, the most sought after specialty areas are risk analytics, risk management especially business intelligent software that can alert management of unusual transactions or significant changes in financial trends. Currently these firm collect these data to measure risk factors of their operations, but most analysis are done by people which take much longer than a computer.
As technology is becoming more important for these finance companies, where they have vast quantities of data that needs real-time analysis, the report predict that there will be significant high demand for information system management (ISM) graduates with knowledge and skill in database, risk management, data analysis, and large systems integration because these are IT skills that are not well established in finance and banking area prior to the financial crisis.
With good information system management in place, these companies can evaluate investment portfolio risk, trading risk and credit risk quickly in matter of minutes or hours rather than several days as with current human intensive system. Beside these area, there are also great needs for information technology graduates with skills in network security and project management.
According to government survey, the number of IT jobs posted by financial services firms was up 24% in the past six months. Since there is a shortage of IT people, these jobs will be difficult to fill immediately so the needs will probably lingering for at least three to five more years. When the survey was announced, universities reported that the enrollment in IT and ISM majors have increased 20%. More and more business and finance students are switching into Information System Management (ISM) so there is also a shortage of instructors in this field as more universities are quickly realize this trend and begin to offer more courses.
Topping the list of technology skills in high demand are programming expertise in the C, C++ languages. Other programming skills that are needed are Java, J2EE and Perl. However, when it comes to financial systems, C and C ++ languages are preferred because they allow faster execution, support language quantities of data and allows the system to do a lot of simulation and modeling with big data strings. Most financial services companies need database skills such as database administration, SQL, and Oracle. Software programmers who interest in the financial area should take additional business courses such as finance, accounting, economics and risk management.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
