Undeniably, the banking industry is popular among multiple academic disciplines and the digitalisation of banking over the last decade has led to the introduction of new and innovative banking services that aims to serve the needs of end-users in a more efficient and effective manner.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched the Financial Sector Technology & Innovation (FSTI) scheme – which committed $225 million over 5 years to encourage the entire Financial Services (FS) industry to set up innovation labs and run FinTech experiments. For a traditional and heavily regulated industry – Ms Fernn Lim, Chief of Staff, Nexus, SC Ventures felt that this was an exciting move because banks were now given the permission to experiment with the latest financial technology in a sandbox environment.
Along the way, she and her team faced various hurdles and one of them was tackling a change in mindset. Lim notes that she and her team had to heavily emphasise that technology is not here to remove jobs but to help fellow employees run faster and work more productively. She shared that for jobs that were made obsolete, there was a commitment from the bank to upskill and reskill their workers to ensure that they were well-equipped with the relevant skills and knowledge.
Lim also shared about a cliched answer heard back then, which was ‘FinTechs were eating banks’ lunch’ – but that was never the case. Lim believes that there is space in the market for both FinTechs and banks to co-exist together, sharing the same the intent of making banking a better experience for the end user.
Looking back, Lim shared that most banks now have an innovation lab and/or innovation mandate to leverage technology to improve banking in general, noting that some banks such as Standard Chartered have gone one step further and set up investment funds to invest in the FinTechs that they commercialised with. Banks today don’t shy away from working with FinTechs. Instead, they acknowledge that the trend is here to stay, and the key question should be “What should the entire banking ecosystem do about it instead?”.
Over the course of her career, Lim has run several FinTech accelerators and has met many FinTech companies. She reckons that her most memorable experiences were to see industry peers and/or startups that she has collaborated with succeed. Some of these include Silent 8 – an AIML platform that helps to fight financial crimes. When Silent 8 first started in 2013, they were only a small team and today, they have an over 150 men strong team and recently completed their Series B funding. Another would be Fundnel - where she first met the founders Khailin Sng and Kelvin Lee at a conference on a Saturday in 2015. Today, they are now a private investment technology platform and have amassed more than USD 12 billion worth of deals. She also cited Bento – a robo advisor by Chandrima Das that was acquired by Grab.
Lim recognises that running a technology business is tough and what the public often sees is the top 1% of startups that excel and exit, sharing that not many see the number of startups who have failed. Hence, she is always happy to see her industry peers succeed and do well.
When asked about one key piece of advice to give to youths today, Lim shared, “Stay hungry. It’s a very competitive market and we are always looking for the top 1% to help value add to the business. Many youths worry about not having the right credentials. I’m of the view that they need to focus on having the right attitude. Anything else can be taught.”
For youths, it’s important to keep an open mind and not to pigeonhole themselves too early. Lim shared that it is alright for youths to explore and expose themselves to different jobs and industries. Similar to playing sports, one needs to try it out for a period of time and assess for themselves if they like this particular sport. It is also important for one to ask if this plays to their strengths and whether they have the aptitude for it, sharing that if one does not fancy or perform well at the sport, it is perfectly fine to change tracks for something that they fancy and perform well in.
Lim also expressed that having more than one interest is good as it helps with cross pollination of ideas and enhances one’s thinking process, citing the example that if one was to study the history of innovation labs and some of the greatest innovation inventions, success came from rapid experimentation, rapid iteration, frequent failure and in many cases - cross pollination of ideas.
Lim shared that youths need to realise that their first job will rarely end up as their forever job – and thus urge youths not to worry about finding THE job with the greatest prospect, expressing that she is a firm believer in liking your job - “If you like your job and you are good at it, the reward, recognition and prospects will come naturally.”.
Meanwhile, her advice to youths on when to start thinking about their career? The cliched answer – “You should start thinking about it yesterday”.
She notes that while the traditional concept we have been taught is to start job hunting only after graduation – it’s a competitive world out there and that if one is truly talented, she has seen firms offer full-time, well-paying jobs to university students.
To find out more about what Fernn Lim, Chief of Staff, Nexus, SC Ventures, has to share, register for Bedok Career Conversations today.
Комментарии