Although the drop in oil prices has caused disruption and instability in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, great uncertainty sometimes stems from great transitions, and this just might be the transition from an oil-dependent economy, to a digital economy that appeals to a predominantly young and growing population, said Ramez Shehadi, Executive VP and MD, Booz Allen Hamilton Mena.
Digitisation is a key engine that enables growth through the transition from a consumer to a creator society. Investments in digitisation are no longer a nice to have rather they have become a must have as they create a broad socioeconomic impact in a country. This impact covers GDP growth and job creation, collaboration enablement and social inclusion, knowledge creation, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Digital transformation in the financial sector (and beyond) has the potential to create a myriad of new services. With the creation of these new services comes the need to support their development, marketing, provisioning and continuous enhancement, among other requirements, which will support the creation of jobs across the current and future financial services value chain.
“There is no doubt that digital transformation in the financial sector will fuel job creation especially for personnel with specialised skills such as data scientist, digital app developers, digital payment experts, and cybersecurity specialists. It will also fuel lateral job movements and a repositioning of current jobs in the financial sector, whereby traditional counter clerk positions will transition to financial services analyst positions,” said Shehadi.
With the power of advanced data analytics, today’s counter clerk will be able to proactively and predictively offer a customer the most personalised services required when that customer enters a financial centre, or over the phone or internet — based on data insights from that customer’s financial behaviour.
By Babu Das Augustine
