SEB has been sponsoring the Tech Talent of the Year award for several years as a way of positioning the bank as an attractive employer for talented people in the tech area.
“Some years ago we noticed many prospective employees didn’t realise what a bank can offer people who work with technology. While the situation is much better, and we can attract the right talent, many preconceptions remain,” says Petra Ålund.
She says SEB has communicated with prospective employees about opportunities to work with technology that helps solve important issues in society, such as security and sustainability.
Andreas Helgesson concedes he had preconceptions about banks and tech before joining SEB.
“I thought of banks as slow-moving and bureaucratic, with lots of red tape. I was surprised to see it’s not all true; there is a lot of cool stuff behind the scenes,” he says.
In the final round of the Tech Talent of the Year competition, Helgesson presented a case in which he used artificial intelligence to track user behaviour in the banking app. The idea was to recognise irregular behaviour to prevent fraud and other criminal activity.
He is currently working with threat modelling in SEB’s Group Security & Cyber Defense unit. The bank’s developers will be able to more efficiently and reliably determine where threats may appear in the system so that they can consider this before programming even starts. That way, SEB’s systems will be even more secure.
Helgesson has one year to go at Chalmers University of Technology, where he studies Industrial Engineering and Management. During this period, he hopes to do his master’s thesis at the bank.
Further down the line, he wants to work with technology on a strategic level.
“But for now I’m going to make the most of my internship here at SEB,” he says.