Banks see high management turnover

It is said that in the past Ethiopian year the banking industry have seen senior bankers reshuffle from one to other.
The issue has been attached with the hiring of new top management in different banks that include big private banks, according to sector actors.
Experts in the banking industry argued that it is because of adapting a new system and applying the recommendation of consultancy firms that develop a strategic plan for the banks.
These experts said that the financial sector has been changing over the last years. They argued that to some extent it might be related to the political change. “When banks implement a new strategy a crowd of senior experts moves to that institution,” they said.
People who work at the banks say that new management is not considering in-house talent but instead is opting to hire people from outside.
“Hiring people other than the professionals in the company is the other reason senior staff are leaving their firms and looking for jobs in other banks,” one of the senior bankers said.
He said that open positions in banks have become common and as a result banks are also losing their staff when existing experts move from one bank to the other.
Sources said “if you see Bank of Abyssinia (BoA) most of the new senior management staff are new and come from the state owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) that the current president of BoA, Bekalu Zeleke, had led for many years.”
At the same time the senior staff at CBE came from other private banks like Awash Bank after Bacha Gina took the helm at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, according to sources.
The financial industry is on the top in regards to profit compared with other industries. The sector is also growing aggressively in relation to recently applied rules of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) and tough competition between banks.
“Even though the sector is dramatically growing in the past half a decade the labour market is not providing strongly qualified professionals,” experts argued.
According to them that might be the other reason the senior staffs are moving from one bank to the other.
They said regarding losing highly qualified experts the state owned financial giant is the major victim. Mostly banks are taking CBE staff because they are highly trained by the government and have wide experience.