The skills young financiers will need to thrive in the age of AI

{"text":[[{"start":6.95,"text":"For financial professionals, an earnings call once triggered hours of work — listening to the call, reviewing and summarising the transcript and analysing the data before adjusting valuation models and advising clients."}],[{"start":19.55,"text":"“Now we can deliver the summary of an earnings call within a minute of the call taking place,” says Lily Li, head of AI adoption and solutions at asset manager Franklin Templeton."}],[{"start":29.700000000000003,"text":"As well as handling earnings season workloads, AI is helping financiers with tasks ranging from constructing portfolios to tailoring banking services, based on analyses of unstructured data such as emails, text messages and voicemails."}],[{"start":45.6,"text":"But if the technology’s capabilities are clear, the question for business schools is what skills and experiences will the next generation of financiers need to thrive in the age of AI?"}],[{"start":57.45,"text":"“It’s anyone’s guess where it’s heading,” says Alina Rosu, a finance professor at HEC Paris and co-director of its Master in International Finance. “And it’s not easy for the young generation because in some senses they need to become more technical. But they also need a broader view of the world.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":75.25,"text":"For now, both technical expertise and broader capabilities are in short supply. Bank of England data from 2024 confirms this gap. It found that 81 per cent of businesses surveyed in the UK financial services sector saw lack of access to talent and skills as either a large, medium or small barrier to AI adoption."}],[{"start":94.9,"text":"A similar survey of European financial services groups by EY published in December 2024 found that while 78 per cent of those surveyed believed their employees lacked strong generative AI capabilities, only 25 per cent had established training programmes in this branch of AI."}],[{"start":112.10000000000001,"text":"Rosu says financial professionals will need more technical capabilities. However, she also stresses the need to reinforce traditional skills."}],[{"start":121.50000000000001,"text":"“Knowing your financial fundamentals will still be crucial,” she says. “Then you can essentially challenge the AI and orient it towards giving better answers.”"}],[{"start":130.20000000000002,"text":"However, the pace at which AI is transforming the work of finance professionals means business schools need to go beyond traditional instruction. A report last year by the UK’s Financial Services Skills Commission scored the likelihood of jobs in different sectors being affected by AI advances; financial services ranked highest, ahead of IT."}],[{"start":151.20000000000002,"text":"In response, business schools are adding courses and electives to their finance courses. At HEC Paris, for example, finance students must take at least one of its “AI & Finance” electives."}],[{"start":163.05,"text":"“You don’t need to be a coding wizard,” says Rosu. “But you need to understand what it’s doing.”"}],[{"start":168.15,"text":"Technical skills are certainly seen as important by the UK’s Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC). It has identified 13 areas of expertise as crucial to the sector’s success, including software development, digital literacy, data analytics and machine learning."}],[{"start":185.85,"text":"One reason finance students need to grasp the workings of AI is so that they can question its results, says James Dow, professor of finance at London Business School."}],[{"start":196.5,"text":"“AI is still at a stage where a lot of its output is unreliable,” he says. “Even if it’s not hallucinating, it’s quite capable of producing superficial analysis.”"}],[{"start":206.45,"text":"Technical knowledge helps finance students retain control over their decisions, says Lukas Gonon, assistant professor of AI for finance at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland."}],[{"start":217.35,"text":"“They need to learn how not to rely on AI too much and always use their own judgment and understanding to assess the outputs,” he says."}],[{"start":226.2,"text":"St Gallen runs a course titled Fit for Artificial Intelligence in Finance that explores how deep learning and generative AI are being used across the sector, whether in retail banking, derivatives hedging, asset management or algorithmic trading."}],[{"start":242.54999999999998,"text":"Khadeeja Bassier, who is chief operating officer at asset manager Ninety One, says mastering finance in the age of AI will rely heavily on human skills."}],[{"start":252.74999999999997,"text":"“This is an industry that historically traded on information,” she says. “But we’re moving to a system where judgment is the human edge because you get all these signals, but how do you tell what actually matters?”"}],[{"start":264.54999999999995,"text":"The FSSC backs Bassier’s view. Six of the 13 skills highlighted as desirable by the advisory body — creative thinking, coaching, empathy, adaptability, relationship management and teamwork — are so-called “soft” human capabilities."}],[{"start":280.49999999999994,"text":"While Bassier says that machine learning or data science expertise are important, she sees a danger of focusing only on technical knowledge at the expense of interpersonal skills, which she believes will give financial professionals their real advantage in the coming years."}],[{"start":295.6499999999999,"text":"“It’s less about analytical horsepower in isolation than how to join the dots and find where the digital footprint makes contact with the real world,” Bassier says."}],[{"start":305.2999999999999,"text":"“What is the non-machine-readable element that we can convert into alpha [enhanced returns] for our clients?”"}],[{"start":317.9999999999999,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781513596_5970.mp3"}