Some challenges involved in managing technology teams at financial institutions echo those that exist everywhere, from handling poor performers to buoying morale.
Others are more pronounced in technology, or are unique to the sector.
Technology executives and leaders at banks and credit unions find their teams crave change and want to know their creations have impact. But they also must demonstrate a business case for new technologies rather than being dazzled by buzzy, emerging tech like
Addressing these issues is important because "technology for banks is a core part of their business," said Bridie Fanning, talent and organization lead for North American banking at Accenture.
Some of the challenges start at the top.
"Information technology is usually viewed as a cost of doing business," said Carey Ransom, managing director of BankTech Ventures, a venture capital fund with banks as limited partners. "People educated in business are taught to minimize their costs" rather than investing in something that can stimulate new forms of revenue or growth.
Passion project or smart decision?
Several executives emphasized that technology teams are particularly invested in seeing the impact of their work, and projects that go nowhere can dampen morale. Ensuring there is a viable business case is important, even if it means exciting ventures get cut before they get off the ground.
At the same time, employees also want to devote themselves to projects they are passionate about.
Over the last decade,
"It also feeds into employee morale and productivity," said Muthukrishnan. "You're not only maintaining somebody's code, you're building something new and solving a customer problem."
Oscar Gonzalez, the head of embedded banking for treasury solutions at Citizens Financial Group in Providence, Rhode Island, is not under the technology umbrella at the $222 billion-asset Citizens but partners regularly with these teams. He has observed a similar phenomenon and a strong desire among technology employees to take ownership over a product.
"I have found that people are more productive when they do what they are good at and what they enjoy," he said. "People in information technology especially love changes."
To keep technology employees at Ally feeling invigorated, there is a push from the top to shift people around or up. Muthukrishnan says internal mobility in this part of the company has risen from 7% in 2020 when he joined to 28% currently; those in machine-learning modeling, risk management, compliance, cybersecurity, application development and more have all swapped roles. Recently, for example, the head of technology risk exchanged places with the head of technology operations. Every quarter, Muthukrishnan and other leaders discuss potential new opportunities for many of the $186 billion-asset bank's 2,300 technology employees.
"When people across the organization see that it sparks ideas," said Muthukrishan.
Another piece to the retention strategy is giving back. In technology specifically, Ally employees will help refurbish laptops and other equipment that are donated to nonprofits in Detroit and Charlotte, North Carolina, and teach cybersecurity, coding and other skills in partnership with nonprofits and local governments, including the city of Detroit. They also contributed the bank's personally identifiable information masking code to the open-source community at LangChain, a platform for developers to build artificial-intelligence-driven apps.
Muthukrishan notes attrition is now in the single digits, down from double digits several years ago.
"We have operated with the mantra that we want every other company in the world to go after Ally talent but no one wants to leave," said Muthukrishnan.
The Toronto, Canada-based TD Bank Group, which has $1.4 trillion of assets in U.S. dollars, has a mechanism called TD Invent for turning employees' ideas into real-life projects.
"There is a balance between driving sound business outcomes and having meaningful, interesting work," said Imran Khan, head of TD Invent. "If you become too disconnected from the business, the chances your work will see the light of day will be lower. If you're not thinking far ahead enough to the future, your work may not be as impactful."
For instance, his team decided the metaverse did not yet have practical implications for customers. But they did see potential in
Another balance that can be hard to strike in technology is between burnout and boredom.
"For digital teams that are engaged in member-facing activities and have to meet consumer demands constantly, they are buried," said
But subject-matter experts for traditional banking platforms, such as those used for cold storage or item processing, may see these systems mature to the point where there is not much change happening.
"You don't want the person walking out the door," said Ingram. "Trying to keep them engaged so they don't get bored is a real challenge."
Fanning sees a similar phenomenon taking place at banks. Those who run the legacy mainframe systems may get bored by focusing on one thing, but if they're approaching retirement age, they are often uninterested in expanding their skill sets. New hires for cybersecurity or cloud roles may be uninterested in learning legacy systems.
"One of the big challenges is how to retain the people on the mainframe and how to train new talent for the mainframe systems," she said.
The competition for cybersecurity and cloud expertise is particularly intense, and banks are at a disadvantage if they don't reward individuals accordingly.
"When a technologist gets a cloud certification in Google or AWS or Microsoft, their value in the market immediately goes up by 20%," she said. "I don't think a lot of banks recognize that."
What happened to the war for tech talent?
Despite headlines about
"The volume of jobs available means that if I don't like my employee experience today I can easily shift to another company," said Muthukrishnan. "If I'm remote it's even easier — I'm still sitting in the same desk and chair except I'm working for a different company."
M&T Bank, Citizens Financial Group and KeyCorp are teaching staffers new skills and pitching themselves as innovative and fun places to work.
Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati is tackling the issue with a short-term and a long-term game plan.
The short-term problem to solve is: "How do we become an employer of choice in the industry?" said Brian Minick, the chief technology and information security officer at the $215 billion-asset bank. Technology teams at Fifth Third will frequently pitch topics and panels at industry conferences. Longer term, the bank is honing talent in its headquarters city by partnering with local high schools that have cyber clubs, holding training sessions, and hosting security challenges such as a computer-based "capture the flag" game where students have to hack into each other's computers to steal the flags. Within the bank, there is a one-year leadership development program for high-potential employees in information security.
"The challenges we've faced from a
Discover Financial Services in Riverwoods, Illinois, is also honing talent both inside and outside the bank. The Discover Technology Academy "is our internal community built by engineers for engineers," said Angel Diaz, vice president of technology capabilities and innovation at the $152 billion-asset Discover. In 2023, it launched the public-facing Discover Technology Experience, a website for the company's developers to share expertise.
These problems are especially potent at
"Realistically, there are only so many administrators you'll find familiar with specific core banking systems or application stacks that banks use," said Ingram. "People who can both speak in technical terms and in layman's terms, while understanding the business to boot, are hard people to find."
At the same time, the credit union wants people living and working in the communities it serves. But "a lot of these people know their worth," he continued. "They don't want to pick up and move to Bellingham."
In some cases, Ransom sees community banks hire separate chief information and chief technology officers. It makes sense, in his view, to have a CIO in charge of infrastructure such as existing servers and networks, ATMs and other physical systems, and cloud as well as a CTO dedicated to software development and integration, data strategy and overall software and data architecture.
Finally, managing particular personalities or finding certain balances can be a challenge.
Kristiane Koontz, the director of banking transformation at Zions Bancorp. in Salt Lake City, feels
Both types "can erode the culture and performance of the team overall," she said.
She can spot job-hoppers based on their resumes. For people with highly specialized skills, sometimes one-on-one conversations can be effective by reframing their value as someone who can mentor the next generation of talent, she says. To rewire that mentality more broadly, the $87 billion-asset Zions hands out a quarterly award in enterprise technology and operations. One category of the award goes to someone who empowers others.
"It takes time, but that is part of the cultural shift," said Koontz.
