Training
Learning how to read and write code at companies: the illimity case
News
September 12, 2022
Not only teaching them how to write the code in the company’s programs but equipping working groups with multi-disciplinary skills so they can analyze, prototype, engineer and update high-performance financial risk management software solutions that constitute alternatives to what’s on the market. This was one of the objectives of the Cefriel Coding with Python training project developed by Cefriel and illimity, a high-tech banking group founded and run by Corrado Passera.
The project began in June and will end in November, with a total of 48 hours of online training for around 20 risk management professionals. The six modules of the course address topics relating to advanced software development techniques, testing, data manipulation and scalability analyses, exploiting Python’s versatility and using cloud service-oriented infrastructure that helps increase people’s autonomy in the performance of their work. “The course,” explained Roberta Morici, head of Cefriel training, “is an example of training that meets a company’s actual innovation needs, supporting the development of new processes and new specialized skills.”
The project began in June and will end in November, with a total of 48 hours of online training for around 20 risk management professionals. The six modules of the course address topics relating to advanced software development techniques, testing, data manipulation and scalability analyses, exploiting Python’s versatility and using cloud service-oriented infrastructure that helps increase people’s autonomy in the performance of their work. “The course,” explained Roberta Morici, head of Cefriel training, “is an example of training that meets a company’s actual innovation needs, supporting the development of new processes and new specialized skills.”
“The ability to code, to write software applications, is no longer solely the IT department’s prerogative. These skills are now an integral part of the work of many company teams,” said William Capra, Team Leader Financial & Liquidity Risks under the Chief Risk Officer of illimity Bank. “For us in Risk Management, it is crucial to have people who know how to develop software so we can be independent from the other corporate functions and not only define the policies to be developed but also autonomously, from an operational standpoint, implement the controls, checks and models that help us do our job.”
What have the measurable impacts of the training been so far?
Although their background is mathematics and economics, the people taking the course had no prior IT skills. At the end of the first cycle of lessons, we immediately noticed that participants have acquired a language and methodology for the resolution of common problems and that they initiate the necessary cooperation to develop highly complex risk models and applications. This accelerates the inclusion of new people from other teams. The project is helping us achieve greater overall efficiency in application development as we shorten our time to market, thanks to the ability people now have to further develop the code that has already been written, correctly, without blocking errors.
In addition, the course has entailed the upskilling of the professionals working at illimity, who have had the opportunity to continue learning and growing.
In addition, the course has entailed the upskilling of the professionals working at illimity, who have had the opportunity to continue learning and growing.
What need does this training project meet?
When you write so many lines of code, as we do in financial analysis, you need a development team capable of ensuring that the project remains maintainable, scalable and that it is easy to correct and develop. The skills necessary to do this, in other contexts, are found in different organizational areas, but we wanted to concentrate them in one department so that there are IT skills mixed in with the mathematical financial modeling skills. In risk management, this organization of people will make us more competitive because we will be able to develop without having to rely on external consultants, which too often leads to less modular solutions, making it complicated to plan updates or replacements.
What is the distinctive value that Cefriel has brought?
Cefriel has the ability to put together academia and industry, a combination that is hard to find in other companies. A training project like the one we developed together would not have had the right impact without the presence of academic expertise combined with an understanding of the world of industry, as exemplified by instructors aware of the actual problems that people face. Real-life case studies were introduced in the classroom, along with the principles for resolving issues based on direct experience.
What future developments do you expect?
The creation of a team like this will enable us to deploy a range of development tools that, thanks to Cefriel’s training, will be assets for everyone. After the training, we expect that when a person has developed a piece of code, it will go to a colleague with a standard so it can be understood and therefore quickly developed thanks to the guidelines that we have created. It will be easier to design software solutions because, by sharing an approach and method, we will certainly spend less time discussing how to resolve the problem.
We are convinced that this project is developing the ability to offer applications for others, displayed on the cloud like APIs available to the entire company. Many local data analysis and risk metric projects will be displayed as services to be queried and they will generate greater value than today.
We are convinced that this project is developing the ability to offer applications for others, displayed on the cloud like APIs available to the entire company. Many local data analysis and risk metric projects will be displayed as services to be queried and they will generate greater value than today.
What is innovation for illimity?
For our business, innovation is a starting point, since illimity is a startup. Innovation is a feeling, a getting over an obstacle, the ability to say “this has never been done this way before, let’s try and see how it goes”. In risk management, testing applied to the resolution of business problems is crucial and the choice of innovative solutions enables us to achieve objectives that we would not otherwise be able to reach. It was fundamentally important to innovate workflows. Now we can start with a risk model, then analyze the problem, write equations, create prototypes, engineer, test and display the API, so that the solution we have developed becomes a company asset.