American Express (NYSE:AXP) has hired more than 3,600 technical workers this year and aims to add 1,500 more to its technology arm by the end of 2022, Ravi Radhakrishnan, the company's chief information officer, told Bloomberg in an interview Monday.
About 60% of the hires will be in the U.S., about a third in India, and the remaining will be in Europe, he said. AmEx (AXP) had 64K employees at the end of 2020. The company will be hiring software engineers, coders, and developers as part of the tech push. Teams across the firm are looking for engineers, data scientists and analysts for such areas as lifestyle management, fraud management, and its venture capital unit.
Financial firms are scrambling to add tech talent. According to a recent Deloitte report, some 61% of HR professionals at financial services firms said finding qualified developers would be their biggest recruitment challenge of the year.
"It is without a doubt a challenging environment to recruit technical talent," Radhakrishnan said during the interview. "The war for talent is a true consideration."
During American Express's (AXP) Q2 earnings call, CEO and Chairman Stephen Squeri emphasized the importance of its investments in technology. "We're not taking step function changes in our technology investment because we've been investing in technology all along. We're constantly investing in value proposition."
In the credit card space, SA contributor Evin Rohrbaugh argues that Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) are more capital efficient than AmEx and will create better returns for shareholders.