Imagine going out for a walk or your weekend run and coming back to find your bank balance looking a little healthier.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
It might sound outlandish but getting paid to exercise is already happening.
Through its Activity scheme, Russia’s Alfa-Bank is rewarding its customers for the amount of activity they do. Running for roubles, if you like.
Customers connect a smart device to their online savings account and for every step they take, money is transferred from their current account into a special savings account paying a higher interest rate.
What this innovation illustrates is the way the digital revolution is changing our relationship with banks.
Now our financial institutions have woken up to the fact they have to digitise or die, they recognise the need for more technological fire power in their holsters.
And although it’s good news for Davie, it means fewer high street branches for Granny Ina to visit and experience the human touch.
The good news is, while the need to digitise may have resulted in a reduction in more traditional banking jobs, it has also fuelled the need for more digital-savvy dynamos as can be reflected on s1jobs – with vacancies for business intelligence analysts and infrastructure architects to risk managers and cyber security experts.
As well as boosting their e-banking teams many banks are looking to ‘tech-up’ existing staff.
One of these is Barclays where 20,000 staff worldwide now act as tech advocates. These ‘digital eagles’ are employees with a passion for online and social media who volunteer their time to explain technology to their colleagues and the public.
Royal Bank of Scotland, on the other hand, is looking to augment its human workforce with virtual staff – or rather an Artificial Intelligence (AI ) robot called Luvo. The virtual assistant is able to understand questions from staff posed via web chat and then come up with the answer. The bank reckons Luvo will free up time for staff to answer more complex problems.
Our growing exposure to the digital world means cyber security is never far from the headlines. As hackers get more sophisticated it means banks are having to be one step ahead, not only foiling security breaches today and tomorrow but predicting what might come next year.
In turn, that means strengthening security networks with a range of professionals whose job it is to make it harder for the hackers at every stage. These include security engineers who assess vulnerability; application security engineers developing secure software; security architects who build and design systems, and those all important frontline fighters, the security analysts.
As we hurtle towards the day when the chequebook is a memory and the mobile wallet a must-have, it’s clear career opportunities in digital banking are going to grow – a bit like the new Russian bank accounts which have turned the old saying around and now give you money for your run.
You can count on finding a role in IT and Telecommunications with s1jobs
The post Get a run for your money in digital banking appeared first on .
