It’s just months away before the big digibank reveal and digital full banks Grab-Singtel and Sea are clearly ramping up their hiring process.
A look at their career sites revealed at least 90 job openings located in Singapore.
Grab-Singtel and Sea were awarded licenses by Singapore’s central bank to run digital full banks last year.
Grab-Singtel said in December last year it will set up a dedicated team and fill around 200 roles by the end of this year. It said it will tap on data and technology to redefine how financial services are offered.
The consortium also said its digibank aims to support young PMETs, gig workers, and micro-SMEs to have access to transparent and convenient financial services for their daily activities.
For Sea, it said it wants to meet the financial needs of young consumers and SMEs to drive the digital economy.
Digital full banks are banks that operate entirely online without any single physical infrastructure, such as a bank branch. They are allowed to take deposits from customers.
We take a look at the digibank job offerings Grab-Singtel and Sea have and how they differ from traditional banks.
At least 20 engineer job roles currently available
There are at least 11 engineer roles such as lead data and lead software engineers, senior network and security engineers on Grab-Singtel’s career site.
The group’s also hiring software engineers for backend, mobile android, and iOS.
A software engineer for the iOS platform, for example, has to work closely with teams — in the product, UX/UI, and backend departments — to design, build, and extend consumer-facing new products and features.
The software engineer also has to monitor the performance of the live apps and continuously improve them.
There are also senior engineer roles open for database engineering, test automation, and site reliability engineering.
Over at Sea, there are at least 10 engineering job openings for its digibank.
This includes roles for a systems operations engineer, a network engineer, and a security engineer. It is also hiring IT roles for operations and service. The link to their career site is here.
With the digibanks hiring an army of engineers to beef up their online platforms, the banking sites are expected to be digitally efficient, with smooth processes and a quick fix rate for bugs or issues.
The banking apps are also expected to be on the android and iOS platforms. This means customers will be able to meet most of their banking needs from their smartphones.
Many data analytics, research roles
Grab-Singtel is also hiring at least five data-related roles for its digibank. This includes data analytics and data science managers, as well as a senior data analyst, lead data engineer, and data scientist.
A data scientist role at Grab-Singtel will get to build predictive models using a mix of machine learning and traditional analytics methods. He or she can also validate models on new datasets, based on in-market performance.
Grab is also ramping up on research and analyst roles, like risk analysts.
There are also other roles like a balance sheet analytics and forecasting specialist and a capital and liquidity reporting specialist.
Data is a critical asset for digital banks because the data ensures automated customer onboarding processes. It also reduces the need for additional clicking steps or inputs from the customer when banking from their mobile phones.
By harnessing data and the insights provided, the digibanks can provide quick processes. For example, improving the time to process backend decisions and issuing loans and payments to customers and SMEs.
Multiple backend roles, from loan/credit operations to settlements
There are at least 10 backend roles for Grab-Singtel. This includes managers for settlement operations, cards and unsecured lending operations, and customer support.
For Sea, there are currently no backend banking job openings.
People roles like HR manager, services and payroll
Grab-Singtel is also hiring staff for human resources services and payroll and a legal counsel to cover corporate and governance-related matters.
This means that the Grab-Singtel digibank is likely to run with its own internal HR and legal support.
Chiefs and managing director roles
Leadership roles are also up for grabs.
For Grab-Singtel, it is also looking for a chief risk officer, a head of audit, head of compliance, and a head for investments and insurance.
There’s also a deputy head of anti-money laundering (AML) role who will be tasked to identify, analyse, and interpret trends or patterns in complex data sets to establish improved effectiveness of AML policies and processes.
New digibanks offer more jobs and financing options
Grab-Singtel had said that the consortium will create more opportunities for Singaporeans to take on technology and fintech-related roles, and it will train and equip them with the requisite skill sets in cyber and information security, data science and analytics as well as tech engineering.
The consortium also said that the digibank is a natural extension of the Grab Financial Group as well as the mobile financial business of Singtel, with the aim of enabling wider access to financial services.
As for Sea, the group said it’s already deeply integrated into Singapore’s digital economy through its three platforms Shopee, Garena, and SeaMoney. Its digibank will draw on insights about the needs of these users from across Sea’s digital ecosystem to innovate processes, products, and services.
Both digibanks are set to offer financial services across payments, insurance, lending, and investing and are expected to formally launch in early 2022.
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