ISFB Insight
Develop Skills Before It's Too Late
August 5, 2026
Every bank knows its employees, its business lines, and its training needs. But when multiple roles are evolving at the same time, job responsibilities are shifting, and the required qualifications are changing, no single organization has all the necessary information on its own.
It is important to distinguish between two things that are often confused: skills management and analyzing the trends affecting an entire profession. The former remains the employer’s responsibility. The latter, however, is best shared. This distinction is nothing new for the ISFB; it is at the very heart of its mission.
The Founders' Intuition
In May 1987, Geneva-based banks belonging to the Groupement des Banquiers Privés Genevois and the Groupement des Établissements de Crédit de la Place de Genève decided to jointly establish a higher education institution for banking and finance. They could have continued to develop their courses, faculty, and programs separately. Instead, they chose to pool some of their resources in order to create training programs recognized by multiple institutions.
The credit for this decision goes to them. They created a nonprofit professional association whose primary purpose could be summed up in a single word: pooling resources. Pooling needs, mobilizing in-house specialists, designing joint programs, and ensuring that the skills acquired are recognized beyond the boundaries of a single employer.
The ISFB will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2027. Over the course of four decades, services have naturally evolved, teaching methods have advanced, and new professions have emerged. But the founding principle remains the same: certain achievements are more robust when we work together to create them. Today, nearly 60 institutions are members of the association. They account for approximately 80% of salaried employment in the sector in French-speaking Switzerland and pool training programs, standards, professional expertise, and career development services. The ISFB Observatory for Banking and Financial Skills, established in November 2025, is a natural extension of this history.
Reading Has Become More Difficult
For a long time, identifying training needs was relatively straightforward. A job role corresponded to a fairly stable set of activities, and it was clear which need to address: a regulatory change called for a course, and assuming new responsibilities called for management training. This logic still exists. However, it is no longer sufficient to account for all current trends.
A job title may remain the same even as the nature of the work changes. Some tasks fade away, while others emerge. Knowledge that was long reserved for a few specialists is now expected in a wide range of roles. And skills that are in high demand today may be less sought after tomorrow—or may need to be combined with others.
Each stakeholder observes these changes from their own perspective. Human resources is aware of internal personnel changes. Training managers receive requests from the front lines. Business specialists see practices evolving. Researchers have access to findings. Employees experience, before anyone else, the shift in their own work. Each person has a piece of the picture; no one has the whole picture.
The new challenge is to bring these perspectives together, to compare them, and to distinguish lasting trends from fleeting impressions. We gain a better understanding of a situation by comparing what each person perceives. A training decision made based solely on a media trend risks being made too early, too late, or targeting the wrong audience. Understanding skills needs, too, becomes a collaborative effort.
Nearly forty years after the ISFB was founded, eight local banks followed in the founders’ footsteps. They agreed to jointly fund and establish the ISFB Observatory for Banking and Financial Skills.
The credit goes to them, just as it did to their predecessors. They have chosen to invest in knowledge whose results will not remain confined within their walls. Yet these institutions operate in the same competitive landscape: sharing observations, opening up access to the field, mobilizing their specialists, and comparing their perspectives with those of other institutions and the academic world—none of this can be taken for granted. Their first interbank coordination meeting, in March 2026, marked the start of the operational phase of their work.
The ISFB Observatory is not a new representative body. It does not take a position on either the general direction of the industry or decisions specific to individual institutions. It focuses on a clearly defined scope: occupations, skills, training needs, and potential career paths. This focus is important. It defines the ISFB’s role: to translate observed trends into actionable insights for its members, complementing the work of umbrella organizations and industry institutions without supplanting their mandates.
Knowledge Created Collaboratively
The Observatory draws on four sources: scientific research, field data, professional expertise, and the needs expressed by industry stakeholders. It conducts surveys, carries out research, brings together specialists, develops reference frameworks, and formulates recommendations for skills management and training. These findings are intended to result in publications, professional meetings, and concrete services for ISFB members and, more broadly, for the entire financial ecosystem in French-speaking Switzerland.
Its independence stems from its role within a nonprofit professional association. It does not sell predictions, advocate for any particular technology, or seek to impose a solution. It examines the available information, highlights discrepancies, and draws attention to issues that warrant collective consideration. This independence does not distance it from banks; rather, it is based on their participation. A representative from each contributing institution serves on its advisory committee; academic research, through an academic partnership, contributes its methodologies; and industry experts evaluate the results. Its credibility stems from this combination: a position within the association, direct access to financial institutions, dialogue with senior management and human resources departments, and collaboration with the academic community.
Skills are not just a concern for employers; they primarily affect those whose work is changing. The findings of the ISFB Observatory are therefore intended to inform both management and employees, and to foster dialogue with the social partners.
Prepare while there is still time
Skills management rarely yields immediate results. Identifying areas for development requires perspective; designing training programs requires specialists; and acquiring a skill requires learning, practice, and time. Moving from one role to another also involves recognizing what the person already knows how to do and assessing what they still need to learn. This preparation becomes more difficult as the need becomes more urgent. When multiple organizations are simultaneously seeking the same qualifications, available candidates become scarce. When a field is changing rapidly, those involved must learn as their roles shift beneath them.
A region’s resilience in terms of skills hinges on a fairly simple ability: to recognize changes early enough to maintain multiple options for action. Anticipating change does not mean predicting the disappearance of entire professions. Changes are most often gradual: some tasks become less important, certain skills lose some of their practical value, and others become necessary. Jobs undergo transformation long before they disappear. The sooner these shifts are understood, the more time employers have to prepare their employees. The best time to develop these responses is when things aren’t moving too quickly yet.
A spark, a collaborative effort
A new initiative often begins with the intuition of a single person or a small group, who articulate it and champion it while it is still in its early, fragile stages. But an intuition alone does not make an institution. The Observatory exists because several banks decided to establish and support it, because their representatives devote time to it, because researchers are committed to it, and because professionals are willing to share their experience.
The history of the ISFB had already demonstrated this. The bankers of 1987 did not have to oversee every step that followed; they gave the Institute a mission and an organizational structure robust enough for others to carry on the work for forty years. The founders of the Observatory are taking a similar step: they aim to provide the French-speaking Swiss banking sector with a shared tool for assessing competencies, and it will be up to the members of the ISFB, the partners involved in its work, and the institutions carrying out complementary mandates to bring out its full potential and scope.
© Institut Supérieur de Formation Bancaire (ISFB). All rights reserved.
The analyses and content published by the ISFB may be quoted or reproduced in part, provided that the source is clearly mentioned. Any full or substantial reproduction of this article in another medium or format is subject to the prior written authorization of the ISFB. In order to facilitate reading and without any intention of discrimination, the masculine gender is generally used, in accordance with the grammatical rule that allows it to be used as a neutral value to refer to a group of people comprising both men and women. This publication is intended for ISFB members and their employees in Switzerland, as well as anyone interested in finance in Switzerland. It is not intended to be read or distributed in any jurisdiction where its distribution would be prohibited.
