Out with the old and in with the quant

The commodity trading industry is experiencing an increased demand for market risk professionals that not only possess experience with PnL exposures and daily reporting but strong coding and top notch-modeling skills. 

Rapid advancements in technology is challenging risk professionals to develop competencies in additional programming languages. As a result, we have identified a trend in which clients are requesting candidates that have experience with R, C++ and Python. It seems that for people who wish to survive and thrive in the age of robots, it is necessary to learn a programming language in addition to the traditional areas of market risk. 

Every day headlines remind us that the future is on its way and every so often, it feels like a new approach to risk management is just around the bend. There are several trends challenging the status quo of risk. Many organizations are responding to the evolving nature of risk management through the implementation of vigilance and resilience complement prevention strategies, advancements in perceptive technologies, artificial intelligence and data analytics.

As more organizations begin to digitally transform, we have seen a gravitation towards tech orientated professionals when hiring. Some of the leading commodity merchants have begun to investigate historically unconventional backgrounds when developing hiring strategies. Companies such as Google, Facebook and Jet Blue have now become target companies for some commodity merchants as they look to push the boundaries of data mining, programming and artificial intelligence. 

Whilst the trend towards acquiring talent with a hybrid skillset within Risk Management is not a new one, we have seen businesses make a concerted effort to attract talent who have the ability to program, extract and interpret copious amounts of data. 

Many risk management professionals have been able to identify the changing landscape and have taken it upon themselves to upskill their programming and general technology competencies through pursuing on-line courses and completing further professional studies. 

As the market for these ‘tech savvy’ risk professionals continues to develop, we anticipate that many of the commodity trading merchants will be joining the race to hire this new breed of risk professional, ultimately being forced to think outside the box when developing their hiring and retention strategies.