Talent Development and Retention from the Bankers’ Perspectives: A Study at Islamic Banks in Malaysia

The credibility and performance of the Islamic banks depend on those who operate and manage the overall banking business. Due to high demand towards high performing talents for the industry lately, there is need to identify whether the industry has done their part to train and enhance their existing talents in order to ensure the Islamic banking business remain sustain in the future. This is more challenging when the demand for talents that have education background of combination of both Islamic jurisprudent (Shariah) and finance knowledge become pivotal.It is because of the nature of the Islamic banking business that need to ensure theoverall banking operations including product structure, accounting and auditing, credit evaluation, risk management, and others meet the Shariah requirement. This study therefore embarks to investigate relationship between talent development and talent retention and also to identify the effect of talent development towards talent retention at Islamic banking institutions. A total of 175 bankers from executive to managerial level of Islamic banks in Malaysia have involved in survey conducted in this research. The results show that the respondents agreed there is a relationship between talent development and retention. In addition, talent development do significantly affect talent retention positively. Therefore, as a suggestion from the bankers, there is need to have an appropriate talent development programme to ensure that the existing talents of the Islamic banks are competent both having strong knowledge in Islamic law as well as operating knowledge of the banking business.