The ongoing challenge of the tech skills gap within banking is something employers cannot ignore if they want to maintain competitive differentiation. According to the 2022 BCS State of the Nation report, there were over 64,000 vacancies for UK tech jobs in Q3 2021, a 191% increase in the equivalent period in 2020.

Against a backdrop of skills shortages low code is a mechanism, alongside traditional enterprise application design, to unlock capabilities across the organisation. Every technological application relies on human instincts to continually improve the user experience, and low code technology is pivotal to making the role of employees designing business applications easier and more satisfying. It enables process knowledge, domain expertise, insight and vision that’s embedded in different parts of an organisation to more easily be unlocked. That’s why it is critical IT leaders invest in low code software – they can create an enterprise-wide culture that helps employees at all levels understand, collaborate on and improve business applications, even without special coding knowledge. This saves them time and takes some pressure off scarce resourcing. What’s more, is if employees are satisfied, it reduces the likelihood of staff turnover.

Throughout the pandemic, banks could have done a far better job in adapting to meet the changing needs of customers. They had to rise to the enormous challenges and opportunities created by new streams of data and ever-expanding possibilities for customer engagement – especially through digital channels, and the majority struggled. Some were using the pandemic as an excuse for long call times well into 2021 (in fact some are still now!).

A key issue was that banks found it difficult to populate tech roles to meet increased demand, reduce inefficiencies, and quickly deploy digital solutions. It is vital banks tackle the issue head on, because if they don’t, they end up stuck with legacy systems which build costs into what they do and makes it even harder to recruit and retain new talent. 

One factor in the tech skills gap is the desperate hunt for specialist skills to update legacy systems reliant on old programming languages such as C and COBOL. Candidates for this are either on the cusp of retirement, or so rare that the pool of eligible candidates is getting very shallow indeed. But banks are focusing on the wrong strategy here – instead it would be much smarter to adopt low code software.

When skills are so scarce, low code opens the door to a wider range of candidates to be hired or trained into the role of developing software, including those without knowledge of specific code. It also allows the end users of key systems to do their own low coding and develop solutions that resolve issues more directly. 

Low code software allows all employees within the organisation, not just professional software developers, to create applications quickly and easily. So called ‘citizen developers’, who need only basic programming knowledge to run, update and create new business processes. Citizen developers harnessing low code are the future – research from Gartner has predicted that by 2023 there will be four times as many of them at large enterprises than those working in software development full-time. This fosters collaboration between different teams within a company and enables processes to be streamlined to increase productivity.  

Commonwealth Bank of Australia has successfully used low code customer engagement software to refine customer journey management strategies in real time. It can generate suggested decisions on the ‘next-best experience’ service agents should offer in less than 200 milliseconds for each customer. That meant it has sped up customer query fulfilment to reduce costs and boost consumer satisfaction at the same time.  

Tackling the tech skills gap is not easy, but with low code, banks can make it easier and more satisfying for existing employees to carry out their roles effectively and reduce the need for new hires in the short and long term. That means banks can, not only save money but also spend more time improving the experience for their customers to drive growth. When the skills gap is this acute, banks need to work smart, not hard, and investing in low code software is the logical action they can take to make that happen.