Frankfurt Andreas von Richter has headed LBBW’s venture capital subsidiary for more than three years. He has never completed a classic bank apprenticeship: After graduating from high school, he studied space travel at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, developing devices that test astronauts’ reaction times. One of them was even used in the space shuttle.
“After graduating, I realized that the mostly state-financed space industry is not dynamic enough,” says von Richter. It takes far too long for innovations to be implemented. In venture capital financing, on the other hand, the topics are broader, there is further training and the pace is faster.
Bankers like Andreas von Richter are no longer an isolated case. The financial sector is in the middle of a structural change and has to devote itself to new topics such as digitization or the trend towards more sustainability. This also changes the specialist knowledge that employees have to bring with them – and with it the willingness of the HR departments to also give career changers a chance. “The way banks think about things has changed over the past few years. They are aware that they also need specialists who have different specialist knowledge than trained bankers, ”observes Richter.
In order to move up to the boardrooms of German banks, managers no longer have to enter as bank apprentices, such as Deutsche Bank boss Christian Sewing. Commerzbank’s chief risk officer, Marcus Chromik, has a doctorate in nuclear physics. The head of IT at Deutsche Bank, Bernd Leukert, studied information technology and worked for the software group SAP for many years.
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The examples illustrate how much the job description has changed. Employed bank clerks were also referred to as “bank officials” for decades. The bank apprenticeship was seen as a somewhat leisurely training that was rewarded with practically non-terminable, secure jobs.
New professional groups for new tasks
This simple formula no longer applies. In the past few years, around 14 percent of jobs in the industry have disappeared. “The bank apprenticeship is no longer a guarantee for a secure job or an attractive career,” says Barbara Thiell from the consulting firm Kienbaum. For a job in a management position in the financial sector, more and more knowledge is required than what is taught in a banking apprenticeship.
The topic of sustainability is a prime example of this: In the future, banks must be able to calculate how much CO2 their corporate customers emit – and how they can reduce these emissions. “We will develop specific transformation paths for all industrial sectors in our portfolio. We can use physicists a lot better than bankers, ”said LBBW Board Member Stefanie Münz, who is responsible for finance and strategy, in a lecture a few weeks ago. Among other things, a forester works in the Landesbank’s sustainability department.
The increasingly complex regulations for the industry are also creating new career opportunities: Many banks are looking for specialists for tasks in areas such as regulation and data protection, reports Stephan Szukalski, chairman of the DBV banking union.
These can be IT experts or lawyers who come from other regulated industries such as telecommunications or aviation, says Kienbaum consultant Thiell. The experience gained there with regulation is very important for some tasks in banks. “Just like the ability to drive transformation processes with empathy for the culture that prevails at financial institutions.”
The digitization of the financial sector is also attracting new professional groups. For example, the Italian parent company of Hypo Vereinsbank, Unicredit, wants to hire 2100 new employees in the digital and data sector – and will probably also feel the often lamented shortage of skilled workers in the process.
Kienbaum consultant Thiell also states: “There is an intense battle for good people.” The banks are looking for managers and talents who are able to develop new, data-driven business models and innovative business areas, to design rigid internal structures in an agile manner and to transform to steer successfully.
Downsizing versus shortage of skilled workers
The banks save elsewhere. “Simple activities in the processing, but also in the branch business, are becoming more and more common. And fewer and fewer customers come to the branch, ”says Carsten Rogge-Strang, General Manager of the Employers’ Association of the Private Banking Industry (AGV). Instead, more and more online banks and fintechs are emerging. Financial apps take over the tasks of bank employees at the counter.
And the downsizing is clearly exceeding the growth: from 2010 to 2019, the number of bank employees in the German banking industry fell by 95,238 or around 14 percent, according to the European Central Bank (ECB). The surprising slight increase in the number of employees in 2020 will not change the trend, although it is unclear whether it will come through Brexit or because fintechs, for example, have employed more people.
Rogge-Strang sees no end to the downsizing: “The increasing integration of artificial intelligence will result in further rationalization effects in the next few years. This also applies to higher-quality banking professions ”.
At the same time, the number of independent banks, including their branches, is falling – according to ECB data from 2010 to 2020 by around 22 percent to almost 1,500. The number of branches fell by almost 39 percent to 24,100 during this time.
Most of the time, the downsizing is done in a socially acceptable way, i.e. without dismissal. DBV chairman Szukalski observes that the downward trend seems to be less severe than it was a few years ago. Many cases can be resolved through early retirement arrangements and many employees would find jobs at other banks or in companies in the real economy, for example in financial accounting, without any major difficulties. “Such changes to other industries used to be less common. Today I have fewer conversations with people who are fighting for their jobs than I used to, ”he says.
Bankers as unpopular as truck drivers
As a rule, good bankers would find a job, not least in commercial positions at medium-sized companies, confirms personnel consultant Thiell. “There is a great need in companies for expertise in the areas of compliance, regulation and risk management, where ex-bankers can be of great help.”
For this reason, AGV General Manager Rogge-Strang also advises beginners not to rely solely on an apprenticeship in a bank, but rather to add further training or a dual course of study afterwards. “Depending on the career goal you are aiming for, a bank training alone is often no longer enough,” he says.
The loss of image is now also evident in the official statistics, for example in a study by the Economic and Social Science Institute from 2020: Among the professions that employees advise against, bank clerks are ahead with 66 percent. You share the inglorious first place with professional drivers in freight transport.
more on the subject: Why German financial institutions cannot avoid mergers.