Today, there are not many Nigerians in the risk management space in the financial industry in Canada.
The representation of Nigerians in the financial industry risk management field today has not changed much since ten years ago when, on one of my early morning commutes, I had an epiphany about the reason why I was the only new immigrant that I knew back then that was in Operational Risk Management field.
That day, I had run into an acquaintance while waiting for a southbound connecting train to St Andrews’ station to get to work in the Toronto downtown financial district.
As we talked, I became more convinced that some sections of our community were not aware of certain types of well-paying jobs in the Canadian financial industry such as my risk management field.
When I told him that I worked in Operational Risk in a bank, he asked if I was in Branch Operations, like a teller. And then went on to say that I should continue striving and that soon things will improve for me. He then said, with a hint of pride, that he was a nurse at the Toronto General Hospital.
I paused to unpack his statements.
He had assumed that I was working a minimum wage job in the bank given that, as he explained to me later, as far as he knows, our people are only allowed to work as tellers in Canadian banks.
I smiled inwardly as I remembered what Shakespeare’s Hamlet had elegantly said to Horatio, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
When I asked him why he believed that, he simply said that no-one he knew worked in banks and if they did, it was mostly teller or call centre jobs and that he knew a lot of people having migrated to Canada in the early 90s. I then asked him if he had been a nurse in Nigeria and he shrugged and said that he was a banker and switched to nursing when he came over because it was better than working minimum wage or worse, doing factory work.
I had met many people like that when I first landed in Toronto, Canada and over the years since then.
I have found, over time, that their social network, cultural, and institutional barriers significantly influenced, and narrowed the available field and types of opportunities that they were able to pursue. A combination of being a visible minority with a foreign accent and no “Canadian work experience” or qualifications meant that your resume almost always ended up in the garbage.
It is almost a life and death struggle to find your feet in Canada at the beginning if you migrated as a skilled worker with your family and had to search for jobs while your savings dwindled.
Over time, the career path of least resistance becomes the focus and dreams die, and, sometimes, and, rather unfortunately, the individual ends up giving up the struggle for the easier life of crime.
These barriers were recently validated by some of the feedback I received from Nigerian participants at a recent career talk I delivered at an event organized by a local church in Mississauga. In contrast, the feedback was markedly different from the career talk I delivered a few months ago to graduate students of McMaster University, none of whom were Nigerians. They were better informed about the risk management profession and were actively networking to secure jobs after graduations. This pattern is also repeated whenever I attend risk management conferences either as a Speaker or attendee.
However, there is hope for immigrants that wish to find work in the field of operational risk management. It came into high demand globally after the 2008 financial crises and has since become the fastest rising sector in the risk management industry.
There are now so many job opportunities out there as banks are hiring more risk managers to cope with the demands of COVID-19 and other factors that have made the business of banking riskier, including rise in cyber attacks, government regulatory scrutiny, supply chain disruption, rapid changes in technology and socio-economic upheavals and geopolitical crises that seem to pop up with increasing frequency.
It has gained so much importance that even non-financial companies have increased hiring for Operational Risk professionals.
I’m looking forward to the day when Nigerians are more heavily represented in this field and there are many strategies to get in there.
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Ernest Onuorah, MBA, is a financial services risk consultant, author, speaker, and career coach. He had worked at consulting and financial service firms including PWC, TD, RBC, BMO, and Home Trust Company, a $2.5 billion niche mortgage lender, where he was AVP, Enterprise Risk Management. He holds the CRISC, FRM and CRM designations. His areas of expertise are Enterprise & Operational Risk Management. He can be reached at ernest.onuorah@localhost.