What skills do I need to work in Scotland's fintech sector?

For the Scottish financial services sector to thrive, fintechs need to match emerging talent with enhanced skills.

Blockchain coding, cyber security and data science are just some of the skills emerging fintechs will need to get to grips with in a rapidly changing world of work.

Speaking at the Scotsman’s Fintech panel, Alison McHugh, Co-Founder of Gigly and CEO of Adlantic, pointed to the warning signs in the McKinsey report on Jobs of the Future.

“In ten years time, 8 million jobs will be done by machine, which is huge”, she said.

“The skills that we will need in the future are changing incredibly fast.”

Watch more: Artificial Intelligence can help Scots with numeracy problems

Sat beside Alison, Daniel Broby, Director of Strathclyde Business School CoFIR, stressed that although the jobs market is indeed evolving fast, so too is education around financial services.

Burness Paull Partner, David Goodbrand, was keen to impress his own preference as the discussion arrived at automation.

“As we move towards automation and the robots are taking over”, he said, “we have to embrace the human element as well - human emotional intelligence.”

He said: “There needs to be a blend here because we can’t let automation take over all the decision making in the Fintech and the financial services sector.”