Investing In People To Grow Your FinTech
Darren Franks
Founder of titc.io | Co-Founder of FinTech Association of South Africa | NonExec Director | Podcast Host
In 2020, the financial technology (FinTech) sector was valued at around US$7,3 trillion and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 26.87% until 2030. Only a few short years ago, FinTech was a relatively unknown industry, but its importance in global financial management is becoming more and more pronounced. At the end of October 2021, Forbes reported that investments into FinTech companies had reached US$91,5 billion for the year, which was more than double the amount invested in the industry during the whole of 2020. The rise of FinTech and unicorn start-ups, which saw 200 unicorns enter the market by October 2021, according to Forbes, paints an impressive picture: despite the decline in the global economy due to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, FinTech is rapidly gaining traction and attracting many investors.
In 2018, the global fintech market size achieved a valuation of $127.66 billion, with an expected annual market growth of about 25% until 2022, reaching as much as $309.98 billion.
But successful companies are not built on ideas alone, and businesses need the right talent to improve profit. And herein lies the problem: finding the right people for the job. This may seem easy enough; indeed, people have been employing others for centuries. Moreover, there are many recruitment strategies employed by the best recruitment agencies in the world, for example, that have proven effective at helping companies employ the right people.
But FinTech is not like other industries; it is an emerging industry, and as such, there is no framework to guide the employment of the ideal candidate. The industry also requires people with a myriad of skills, who require much higher compensation than average earners in most other industries. This in itself is a problem; these skilled individuals are highly sought after, and the highest bidder will always be on the front foot. Moreover, most FinTech companies are new. This means that these companies have no employer brand, which makes it difficult to attract the right people to apply for the job.
In Africa, in particular, these problems are exacerbated by the so-called ‘brain drain’, in which qualified professionals are seeking their fortunes in other countries abroad. Furthermore, Africa is a large continent populated by many people of different cultures. Manufacturing cohesion amongst employees of vastly different backgrounds can thus be extremely difficult and impedes the process of employment.
Another prominent challenge in FinTech is the expense involved in the hiring process. Employing a recruitment agency to find the right employee is a costly procedure, and many start-ups or scale-ups do not have the funds to employ these agencies. Of course, in-house recruiters could be employed for this particular function, but even this is costly and limits the company to its recruiters’ skills and networks.
Making Life A Little Easier
While it is never easy to hire the right people, it doesn’t have to be as costly as it may seem on the surface. This is where our?Search-on-Site ?(SOS) model comes in.
Search-On-Site uses the power of the leading FinTech search business dedicated solely to your needs. Find out more about our SOS services by clicking on the image above
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The SOS model allows you to hire the right people for your company without having to employ a full-time recruiter, at a fraction of the cost of a once-off placement fee or the cost involved in hiring a full-time recruitment team.
With the SOS model, you have access to a TalentintheCloud recruiter for a retainer fee. We provide you with a dedicated consultant that offers an end-to-end flexible recruitment service, which includes services such as sourcing, assessing, placing, on-boarding, and reporting. These recruiters use the vast expertise and innovative technology available to TalentintheCloud, as well as key performance indicators designed specifically for start-up and scale-up FinTechs.
We also have the capacity to allow for 30 roles to be worked on at any given time. As such, the size of your project determines the team assigned to you. If you have a bigger project, we will simply assign multiple teams to you.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the SOS model is that you are able to invest in a team dedicated to recruitment. An in-house team, for example, has various functions and responsibilities, which means that it cannot solely focus on recruiting the best talent for your company. The SOS model, however, prides itself on dedication to this task. This is particularly apparent in our average shortlist delivery time of seven days.
According to Eran Feinstein, group CEO of?DPO Group , TalentintheCloud has played an important role in contributing to the success of DPO Group as a global payments company.
“The relationship we have with TalentintheCloud is a close partnership where we truly value their expertise in the FinTech sector. They deliver an unprecedented service, are always on hand to offer advice and are seen by our ExCo as an extension of our business.”