Compliance and integrity are increasingly important themes in the financial sector. This also applies to Payment Service Providers (PSPs), which are increasingly playing a central role in our payment systems. During the months of lockdown earlier this year, the number of online payments exploded. In order to fulfil their role as a gatekeeper, it is important for PSPs to attract and retain the right experts. This is quite a challenge: in the hunt for scarce talent, PSPs compete not only with each other, but also with – often much larger – banks and insurers. In recent years, Dutch banks have established large-scale departments to resolve existing issues and comply with the stricter requirements of regulators. Compared to PSPs, banks can offer their compliance and integrity employees higher salaries and, in some cases, greater job security. That’s why it’s important for PSPs to look for other ways to attract experts.

A jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces

When recruiting new talent, it’s important to emphasize your organization’s unique character. One important difference between young organizations in the PSP sector and the more established names in the banking and insurance world is company culture. The start-up and scale-up culture that prevails at PSPs is desirable to young people and this can be a useful way of attracting this target group. In a similar vein, the innovative character of PSPs is another possible plus. Because even though the Dutch banks invest heavily in technological innovations, they remain in essence a different kind of organization to the pure fintech companies of the PSP sector.

In the search for experts it’s also important to realize that this target group cannot be encapsulated in one particular profile. The different roles that are required to establish a fully-fledged compliance team – from CDD and AML analysts to quality checkers and compliance officers – are capable of being filled by candidates from a huge variety of backgrounds. The educational backgrounds of the compliance experts we’ve placed at clients in the financial sector have varied from criminology, business and economics to history and journalism. After all, the latter two qualifications teach a great deal about source research and pinpointing the key data from large amounts of information. This analytical capacity is the most important quality a compliance expert needs. In other words: You need to love jigsaw puzzles, but not be upset if a few pieces are missing. At the same time, a certain amount of speed is also required. Which is why it is important that analysts can deliver the right balance between thorough investigation and speed.

Providing security

Another point that can make it difficult for PSPs is offering the job security candidates seek. Particularly for small PSPs, mainly short-term projects will be available. And while it is certainly advisable to create as much continuity as possible in the compliance activities as well as in the team itself, this is not always feasible. One way of offering experts this kind of security in short term projects is to use placement arrangements. The recruitment agency takes care of the security candidates seek, while the PSP has access on a project-by-project basis to experts who are able to hit the ground running.

As a recruitment agency, Interim Valley supports organizations in the financial sector to fill roles in Compliance, Data Science & BI, Trade Finance and Lending. In Compliance, we work together with PSPs, banks and insurers, recruiting experts for short as well as long term assignments. In our approach, personal growth and professional development are key, using tools such as our personal development program Live Your Potential.

In the next few weeks we will publish expert blogs about attracting talent when it’s in short supply, the importance of a good onboarding process and how to put together your ideal compliance team.

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Want to know more about attracting the best KYC Experts for your organization right now?

Contact Christian de Vos at c.devos@interimvalley.com / 020 2444 921 or Mark Baerveldt at m.baerveldt@interimvalley.com / 020 2 444 923.

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