Five New Financial Jobs Of The Future
NFT Appraiser? Financial-Bot Supervisor? Industry insiders on the unexpected roles they see coming.
3 min
Money and possessions are evolving in an increasingly digital and virtual world, and financial jobs will also change to keep up. Here’s a look at some new roles those in the industry see emerging.
In-House Bank Hacker
Usually bank security guards keep the bad guys out. How about security guards hired to break in? Large financial institutions have long hired companies to hack into their systems and report back on weaknesses, a process called penetration testing, says Shawn Moyer, co-founder of one of those companies, security-research firm Atredis Partners. A big change that he’s seen in recent years is that financial institutions are employing in-house penetration testers to continuously test their systems. “People have figured out you can’t just do a test once a year. When you’re continuously writing code and you’re continuously deploying new infrastructure, you have to have a continuous penetration-testing process,” he says. It’s always been difficult to find talent, says Mr. Moyer, who has recruited penetration testers for more than 20 years. Now these jobs are even more in demand. Do we need more hackers? “I don’t tend to use that word that much, but yes,” Mr. Moyer says.
NFT Appraiser
As our lives increasingly migrate to digital and virtual worlds, we’ll begin to acquire assets in those worlds, says Ken Timsit, managing director of the Cronos blockchain network. At the same time, he foresees the “financialization of everything,” in which anything with intellectual-property value can become a unique digital asset that can be owned–music, games, even sneakers. Last year, collectors spent billions of dollars trading digital art and collectibles, most of which were attached to NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which act as vouchers of authenticity on the blockchain for virtual goods. So how to assess the value of these virtual assets? Call in the NFT appraiser. Financial institutions will need to hire people from a broad range of industry sectors to help them understand how to properly evaluate digital collectibles, Mr. Timsit says. “Experts from all walks of life will be contributing to calibrating those models.”
Loan Officer as Financial Adviser
Technology developments and regulatory shifts could cut the time it takes to buy and sell a home from a couple of months to a couple of days, predicts Jeremy Wacksman, chief operating officer of real-estate firm Zillow Group Inc. And that could mean loan officers take on a very different role. Now they spend a lot of time running down paperwork: tax returns, pay stubs, credit scores and proof of insurance, Mr. Wacksman notes. Relieved of that, the loan officer of the future could pursue higher-value parts of the job: acting as an adviser and counsellor. They’ll have more time to help customers strategize, look for opportunities and prepare financially for their long-term goals. This already exists to a point, he says, but it’s not nearly as widespread as it could be. “Whenever technology makes things more efficient, it allows people to spend their time doing what they do best,” Mr. Wacksman says. “I think you’ve already seen that trend a little bit in the industry, and I think you’ll see that continue, where agents and loan officers get elevated to become advisers and consultants.”
Chief Fintech Officer
What happens when the financial-services part of an online business takes on a life of its own? You may need a chief fintech officer. Housecall Pro, created as a platform to help plumbers, electricians, landscapers and other home-services providers run their businesses, is one example of a development that is happening more often, says the company’s Chief Fintech Officer Ethan Senturia. It was started to help tradespeople do things like make appointments, create estimates, send invoices and take payments. Today, the financial end is a huge part of the company’s business. As demand for financial services grew, the company brought on Mr. Senturia—an entrepreneur who had previously founded an online lending company and wrote about its demise—-to help embed a financial unit in the platform. It offers clients a suite of products to handle their financial needs, including payments, bank transfers, customer financing, payroll and more. In the future, Mr. Senturia says, more companies built around a core product unrelated to finance will need people in roles like his, responsible for providing financial services to customers.
Financial-Bot Supervisor
People are going to need a new kind of financial adviser if they want someone to help them manage their virtual portfolios of NFTs and other assets, says Bertrand Perez, CEO of the Switzerland-based Web3 Foundation. The group, founded by Gavin Wood, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, works on initiatives related to decentralizing the web. This new financial-management role will best be filled by a bot, Mr. Perez says, as artificial intelligence will be far better equipped than a human to monitor virtual assets and recommend trades. But humans won’t be completely out of the picture, he says: Humans will be needed to look over the bots’ shoulders to ensure that the recommendations they make are sound. A financial-bot supervisor, in other words. “You will need somebody who would sit on top of everything, who would make sure that whatever those bots are proposing as an outcome to the consumers is always within the scope of the regulations,” Mr. Perez says.
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Vacationers scratching their travel itch this season are sending prices through the roof. Here’s how some are making trade-offs.
3 min
Capri Coffer socks away $600 a month to help fund her travels. The Atlanta health-insurance account executive and her husband couldn’t justify a family vacation to the Dominican Republic this summer, though, given what she calls “astronomical” plane ticket prices of $800 each.
The price was too high for younger family members, even with Coffer defraying some of the costs.
Instead, the family of six will pile into a rented minivan come August and drive to Hilton Head Island, S.C., where Coffer booked a beach house for $650 a night. Her budget excluding food for the two-night trip is about $1,600, compared with the $6,000 price she was quoted for a three-night trip to Punta Cana.
“That way, everyone can still be together and we can still have that family time,” she says.
With hotel prices and airfares stubbornly high as the 2023 travel rush continues—and overall inflation squeezing household budgets—this summer is shaping up as the season of travel trade-offs for many of us.
Average daily hotel rates in the top 25 U.S. markets topped $180 year-to-date through April, increasing 9.9% from a year ago and 15.6% from 2019, according to hospitality-data firm STR.
Online travel sites report more steep increases for summer ticket prices, with Kayak pegging the increase at 35% based on traveler searches. (Perhaps there is no more solid evidence of higher ticket prices than airline executives’ repeated gushing about strong demand, which gives them pricing power.)
The high prices and economic concerns don’t mean we’ll all be bunking in hostels and flying Spirit Airlines with no luggage. Travellers who aren’t going all-out are compromising in a variety of ways to keep the summer vacation tradition alive, travel agents and analysts say.
“They’re still out there and traveling despite some pretty real economic headwinds,” says Mike Daher, Deloitte’s U.S. transportation, hospitality and services leader. “They’re just being more creative in how they spend their limited dollars.”
For some, that means a cheaper hotel. Hotels.com says global search interest in three-star hotels is up more than 20% globally. Booking app HotelTonight says nearly one in three bookings in the first quarter were for “basic” hotels, compared with 27% in the same period in 2019.
For other travellers, the trade-offs include a shorter trip, a different destination, passing on premium seat upgrades on full-service airlines or switching to no-frills airlines. Budget-airline executives have said on earnings calls that they see evidence of travellers trading down.
Deloitte’s 2023 summer travel survey, released Tuesday, found that average spending on “marquee” trips this year is expected to decline to $2,930 from $3,320 a year ago. Tighter budgets are a factor, he says.
Too much demand
Wendy Marley is no economics teacher, but says she’s spent a lot of time this year refreshing clients on the basics of supply and demand.
The AAA travel adviser, who works in the Boston area, says the lesson comes up every time a traveler with a set budget requests help planning a dreamy summer vacation in Europe.
“They’re just having complete sticker shock,” she says.
Marley has become a pro at Plan B destinations for this summer.
For one client celebrating a 25th wedding anniversary with a budget of $10,000 to $12,000 for a five-star June trip, she switched their attention from the pricey French Riviera or Amalfi Coast to a luxury resort on the Caribbean island of St. Barts.
To Yellowstone fans dismayed at ticket prices into Jackson, Wyo., and three-star lodges going for six-star prices, she recommends other national parks within driving distance of Massachusetts, including Acadia National Park in Maine.
For clients who love the all-inclusive nature of cruising but don’t want to shell out for plane tickets to Florida, she’s been booking cruises out of New York and New Jersey.
Not all of Marley’s clients are tweaking their plans this summer.
Michael McParland, a 78-year-old consultant in Needham, Mass., and his wife are treating their family to a luxury three-week Ireland getaway. They are flying business class on Aer Lingus and touring with Adventures by Disney. They initially booked the trip for 2020, so nothing was going to stand in the way this year.
McParland is most excited to take his teen grandsons up the mountain in Northern Ireland where his father tended sheep.
“We decided a number of years ago to give our grandsons memories,” he says. “Money is money. They don’t remember you for that.”
Fare first, then destination
Chima Enwere, a 28-year old piano teacher in Fayetteville, N.C., is also headed to the U.K., but not by design.
Enwere, who fell in love with Europe on trips the past few years, let airline ticket prices dictate his destination this summer to save money.
He was having a hard time finding reasonable flights out of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., so he asked for ideas in a Facebook travel group. One traveler found a round-trip flight on Delta to Scotland for $900 in late July with reasonable connections.
He was budgeting $1,500 for the entire trip—he stays in hostels to save money—but says he will have to spend more given the pricier-than-expected plane ticket.
“I saw that it was less than four digits and I just immediately booked it without even asking questions,” he says.
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