Compound fintech talents in short supply in China

More talented personnel return to financial institutions and compound fintech talents are in short supply in China's employment market, the 21st Century Business Herald reported on Tuesday.

With strong development momentum, internet companies attracted many professionals in traditional financial institutions over the past few years.

However, some chose to return to traditional financial institutions after changes in the financial industry's development direction and professionals' view on career development choices, as well as development of traditional financial institutions.

The talent flow between internet companies and financial institutions remained active last year, according to a report on fintech talent flow trends in 2020.

In H1 last year, the top three choices for job changes from internet companies were in the real estate construction, finance and manufacturing industries, with turnover rates at 13.9, 12.3 and 9.2 percent, respectively.

Insurance and banking companies have become first choices for internet talents, according to the report.

China had a shortage of 44,386 fintech talents, with 39,371 jobs from 232 companies available in the first quarter of this year.

According to an investigation among over 200 fintech companies' CEOs, founders and managers, about 86 percent of participants consider it the greatest challenge to find compound fintech talents.

The second and third greatest challenges were the lack of talent in particular technological areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing, and the too high salary demands of such outstanding talents, according to the 2021 China's Fintech Companies Chief Insight Report.

Currently, the upgrading and innovation of fintech technology cannot be achieved without enterprises' continuous investment in R&D talents, said Huang Aizhou, managing partner for fintech at KPMG China.

Different types of talents should be used and diversified voices and opinions should be listened to in order to stimulate the potential of talents and help enterprises make breakthroughs in scientific and technological innovation, according to Huang.