As Danske Bank’s head of trade finance, Jukka Kuusala oversees one of the largest trade banking operations in the Nordic region.

After completing an MBA during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kuusala became interested in a concept of leadership designed to encourage employee satisfaction and reward initiative.

In this Trade Leaders interview, he opted to focus on a topic that can sometimes be overlooked when trade finance market issues are discussed: the people who make up the industry. He gives his views on how to incubate talent as seasoned practitioners retire, why trade finance leaders should embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, and where artificial intelligence fits in.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

 

GTR: What is the biggest challenge you see right now for attracting and retaining talent in trade finance?

Kuusala: The widely accepted argument appears to be that the most significant bottleneck slowing the growth of trade finance is lack of competent labour force. It comes in two forms: the lack of new talent, and the fact that people are retiring at an accelerating speed. Therefore, thinking about career planning, employee satisfaction and employee journeys is really close to my heart, and that also ties in with diversity, equity and inclusion. They can be seen as two separate things, but there are, in fact, considerable synergies.

There is a longstanding belief that the way to get people to stay in their roles is offering more money, whereas the most contemporary academic studies show that compensation is number three or four on the list of items that employees want in return for staying at their current employer or joining a new one. The first priority is career opportunities within that organisation. Talents today don’t see themselves sitting down next to a typewriter for the next 25 years.

Secondly, while it is a factor for any age group, it is especially important for younger talents to work for a place that they are proud of. They don’t want to feel ashamed to tell people where they work. They are thinking about the values of the organisation, how people are treated and whether there are equal opportunities – and then comes the money.

Trade finance leaders, irrespective of country, need to consider these things in order for us to create something valuable and a more attractive workplace for the future stars.

 

GTR: Where do you find new trade finance talent?

Kuusala: The first option most often is to go out in the market, where generally the expectation is that applicants have some kind of idea of what they are looking for. But that group of people is getting narrower all the time, which is a global phenomenon. There appears to be a traditional belief that it takes several years for someone to become a prudent trade finance employee, but I challenge that. Of course, it takes time to get recognition in the market and so on, but the learning curve of young talent has proven to be surprisingly quick. Their capability to adapt to new features seems to be amazing, and something we can learn a lot from.

The second option is to hire senior school or university graduates, for example at student fairs. In that case, the employer has to have a good reputation and work to stay visible at schools and universities. A good thing to remember is that none of the universities are teaching trade finance, so we it is advised to consider expectations on both sides.

 

GTR: The average student interested in working at a bank is probably attracted by investment banking, trading floors and big M&A deals. How do you make trade finance interesting to them?

Kuusala: Just recently we had a meeting about how to make transaction banking and trade finance understandable and attractive compared to those fields of finance, which traditionally get the most recognition. We don’t have any kind of magic pill to fix it. But as you know this kind of dusty brown envelope era of trade finance is almost over; whenever we say that we have already artificial intelligence in use, and we also have significant uplifts within the sustainability field, then we are speaking the language of the new generation. I would say the key thing to turn on the light in their eyes is to ask, ‘do you want to be enabling something unique?’ Then they can understand they will be doing something concrete, emphasising the future of the cross-border payments and trade.

 

GTR: If you’re lucky enough to hire fresh trade finance talent, how do you incorporate them into the team and maintain the knowledge held by departing staff?

Kuusala: We need to implement robust knowledge transfer programmes that are designed through mentorship programmes, where retiring seniors mentor younger employees and so forth, but also using job shadowing and cross-training to ensure that the crucial knowledge is retained within the company. Part of that is having age-diverse teams. Lastly, we also need to make sure that compensation packages are competitive and appealing for new hires. We have to highlight modern work elements like remote working options, career development opportunities, and a strong emphasis on work-life balance.

 

GTR: I understand you have a vision of different types of leadership in your organisation. Tell me about them.

Kuusala: I am very much in favour of an academic concept called transformational leadership in transactional banking. Trade and export finance organisations are usually led by transactional leadership styles, which emphasise leader centricity, and performance metrics are based on the number of transactions and so forth. My humble questions about that are: where is the customer in it? Where is the employee in it? Can we find something more modern to tackle that? The answer, if you ask me, is a transformational leadership style in which the leader is perceived more as a coach rather than the ultimate decision-maker for every single situation. That approach endorses the responsibilities and opportunities for individuals working in a team and improves employee well-being and recognition. When an employee comes to me and asks, ‘can I sign this or not?’, my question would be, ‘what is your opinion? Would you sign it?, and they answer and explain their reasoning and I would say ‘go for it’, in a supportive, encouraging manner

Transformation leadership will result in increased employee motivation and engagement, enhanced innovation – because employees will take more pride in what they do – and more creative problem-solving and stronger team dynamics.

 

GTR: What is your approach to diversity and inclusion in your team?

Kuusala: Studies, including our own, show that diversity has measurable and meaningful benefits. It brings employee engagement, less employee turnover and more satisfied employees, which results in higher productivity and profitability. Some people say that diversity means hiring people because of their heritage, instead of their talent. That kind of argument – that it is somehow favouring minorities over someone else – is not the case. In our book, diversity is welcoming people onboard irrespective of background, with required competencies. Diversity and inclusion should not be something that overrules common sense. The individual and whether they match the skills we need is the most important thing, which is why we now have applications without age, picture or gender, to illustrate an example.

 

GTR: Do you think that currently, trade finance in western and northern Europe has a diverse and inclusive workforce?

Kuusala: We are happy to see that trade finance in the Nordics is kind of a melting pot of different nationalities and backgrounds, enabling the benefits to be embedded. In terms of age, we have a fair amount of senior people with pivotal experience, and we have plenty of more junior level experts as well. However, interestingly, we seem to partly miss the mid-age range, roughly people in their 40s.

 

GTR: Where did they go?

Kuusala: We can say that they never got in as such. About 10-15 years ago corporates’ order books were more challenged due to the economic slowdown, which had a direct impact on exports and imports, and in turn led to hiring freezes and helped create this shortage of mid-aged people in trade finance in the Nordics in general. Today, that fact may cause concerns about resilience and continuity planning, which I would encourage organisations to consider now.

 

GTR: Can AI replace some of those people leaving the workforce?

Kuusala: At the moment it’s about balancing technology with people. My recent university thesis in the UK scrutinised this intriguing field of symbiosis between digitalisation and people within transaction banking. It was found that as long as there aren’t common internationally recognised standards and rules in place, one can’t fully rely on AI in this human work-centric area. The world isn’t ready for a completely digital value chain yet, even as certain benefits are already there to harvest. We’ve made progress, like using AI to shrink reaction times by up to five times for some tasks. It’s made things faster and more cost-efficient, and is already impacting on the future employee profiles banks and corporates seek, to accelerate the technological development in this area.