Building fintech fluency across a global bank

The challenge

Upskilling at scale. HSBC wanted a broad cross-section of its people — not only its technology specialists — to hold a strong working understanding of financial technology, so that colleagues across every business area could contribute to developing new digital products and services. The challenge was one of scale: how to provide relevant foundational knowledge for thousands of employees in different roles and markets.

My role

I led on learning strategy and on the customisation of the programme for HSBC — translating established Oxford executive education content into something that fitted the bank’s context, its people and the way they would realistically learn alongside the day job.

The approach

Fintech 101 was developed from the Oxford Fintech Programme, with selected online content adapted for HSBC. The work was less about transferring material than about judgement: deciding what a bank-wide audience actually needed to understand — digital disruption, platforms, artificial intelligence and open banking — and how far each topic should go for people who were never going to become specialists.

Delivered online, the programme was designed to reach staff across business areas and geographies without taking them out of role, and to give people something they could use in the conversations they were already having at work.

The result

The programme was the first partnership of its kind between the University of Oxford and the banking sector. It gave employees across all of HSBC’s business areas a shared foundation in financial technology — a common vocabulary for discussions that had previously depended on specialists, and a starting point for people in non-technical roles to take part in shaping the bank’s digital products and services.

Read the announcement at Saïd Business School →