Skills Shortage in Ireland: Spotlight on Fintech

The emergence of Financial Technologies (Fintech) is changing the world of finance for businesses and consumers alike. While technology and financial services have always gone hand in hand, the advances in digital technologies in the last decade have transformed the financial services landscape dramatically. Technology in the finance sector has evolved from supporting financial products and services to becoming an integral part.

The financial ecosystem has undergone a dramatic change and now includes a large number of innovative Fintech start-ups and technology companies. These organisations interact with consumers in a vastly different way to established financial institutions.

Technologies such as cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data analytics are enabling unparalleled levels of innovation in financial services. The emergence of Fintech represents vast innovation potential and brings with it the prospect of a power shift away from those who have historically held it (large Financial Organizations) towards the general population.

Fintech opportunities emerge in Ireland

Fintech products and services have drastically changed consumer behaviour. Consumers can now open bank accounts over the internet without physically going to a bank, link their accounts to smartphones to monitor every transaction and settle dinner bills with friends using payment apps like Revolut. In the future, consumers may be able to avail of financial advice that is automated with little to no human interaction required.

The rise of Fintech has impacted business operations too. Organisations have alternative market places to source financing, such as peer-to-peer l lending marketplaces, such as Prosper, LendingClub and OnDeck. Car insurance businesses now offer consumers telematics-based insurance policies where your driving is monitored using data collected via a ‘blackbox’ that is fitted to your car or via your smartphone. The data collected is used to calculate your premium.

Irish Fintech companies have seen a surge in financial activity in the first half of 2020, according to KPMG’s latest report with $328.6m recorded in VC, PE and M&A transactions across eight deals. This represents double the value of comparable transactions in the Irish Fintech sector for the entire year in 2019. Enterprise Ireland and Ernst and Young’s 2018 report found that there are over 7,000 people working in the Irish Fintech sector with this figure expected to rise to 10,000 by the end of 2020 (A&L Goodbody 2019).

Despite the impressive growth of Fintech in Ireland, the availability of a skilled workforce is the most frequently cited challenge in the market. PwC’s 2019 CEO survey found that the skills deficit is more acute in Ireland than globally, with 84% of CEOs in the Irish financial services sector concerned about the availability of key skills, compared with 76% globally.

Professor Martin Crane is leading the new MSc in Fintech and Technology Innovation at DCU:

‘The innovation potentiated by the emergence of Financial Technologies (Fintech) holds the prospect of a shift of power over everyday financial transactions away from those who have hitherto held it (in large Financial Organizations) and towards the general population, leading to a potential ‘democratisation’ of finance in areas such as Aggregation, Micro Investing and Crowd-funding. Other key application areas of Fintech Innovation have been towards empowering companies in the Financial Services sector, predominantly in Payment Services and Regulatory Compliance by simplifying and automating their processes.

In this major we draw a distinction between those who use these products in a business context and those who actually develop and realise them. It has been developed to deliver the requisite Fintech background knowledge in key underpinning areas such as Data Governance and Financial Time Series as well as technologies necessary for developing Innovative Fintech technologies e.g. AI and Blockchain’ – Martin Crane

Find out more about our MSc in Fintech and Technology Innovation at DCU here: https://www.dcu.ie/courses/postgraduate/school-computing/msc-computing-major-options

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles.

If you would like to be featured in our podcast series drop us a line & don’t forget to sign up for notifications for our latest episodes and follow us on Twitter, Linkedin, SoundCloud, iTunes or your own favourite podcast platform.

Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking