Young professionals best positioned to lead the charge in disruptive tech—RBC’s McKay

Canada’s financial sector needs to incorporate disruptive innovation into all aspects of its process so that it can survive and succeed in the modern era, according to RBC’s CEO

Young professionals best positioned to lead the charge in disruptive tech—RBC’s McKay
The nation’s young professionals and entrepreneurs are crucial to the continuous evolution of the Canadian fiscal system, according to Royal Bank of Canada CEO David McKay.

In a Winnipeg meeting with RBC employees and clients last week, McKay stressed the need for the financial sector to incorporate state-of-the-art technology into all aspects of its process so that it can survive and thrive in the Information Age.

McKay stated that tech-savvy millennials hold the key to ensuring that disruptive innovation works in Canada’s largest bank, which is currently balancing $1 trillion in assets.

“Youth today have never been more prepared to solve these challenges, to transform the economy," McKay said, as quoted by the Winnipeg Free Press. “We need to leverage that incredible resource. We saw first-hand what they can do.”

“This is not just about the RBC… It’s about challenging all private and public sector companies and not-for-profit organizations,” he added. “It’s about stability of the future workforce.”

McKay stated that one of the approaches that RBC will be trying is to organize a team of 30 PhDs that will be given 3 years to “fundamentally disrupt the way we do banking.” The team would be working separately from the bank’s mortgage and credit card departments, in a set-up that the CEO said would encourage truly significant steps forward as innovations would be developed “in remote labs away from the strong core of ecosystem.”

“They can be free to innovate and tackle longer timeline challenges without the pressure of quarterly results,” McKay explained. “It is mission-critical. The way we used to work is just not sustainable. The world is changing. We have to find new ways of building at RBC.”


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