Financial technology education provision and perceived skill gap in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka

Abstract

The current spread of financial technology (fintech) adoption within the financial and business industries across the globe is expected to increase the demand for employees with fintech skills and competencies. This in turn is likely to shift the traditional skill set required for financial and accounting professionals. This article investigates the competency level of employability skills required for the current job market from employers’ perspective in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. The United Kingdom and Sri Lanka are typical of industrialized and emerging economies, respectively. They are at the end of two opposing poles in terms of financial infrastructure, economic development, regulatory framework and educational system. This suggests a significant divergence of the two countries in terms of skills gap. We test for this via three main hypotheses. To this end, we identify the competency level of employability skills as expected by employers and identify the skills gaps between expected and observed competency levels of employability skills. Information on a set of twenty skills is collected via a questionnaire. We find no major skills gaps in the United Kingdom. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, shows severe skills gaps. The gaps are particularly acute within the soft skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and decision making. Our findings reflect the importance of expanding the fintech higher education curricula by assessing and implementing employability skills development activities.