Hi Imbiah,

Long story short, a typical corporate finance career map in big MNC is like this:

1) Accounts Clerk or Assistant $1.5k
2) Senior Accounts Clerk $2k
3) Finance Executive $2.5k
4) Senior Finance Executive $3.5k
5) Accountant or Finance Assistant Mgr $5k
6) Snr Accountant or Finance Mgr $8k
7) Snr Finance Mgr $10k
8) Financial Controller $13k
9) Finance Director $20k
10) Regional Finance Director or Group Sub Finance Director $20k - $35k
11) Group Financial Controller >$35k
12) Group CFO >$50k

Of course titles and salaries are just indication and will differ on individual circumstances, but this is pretty much a "standard" route map for people who study Finance / Accountacy.

Based on my experience, there are a few choke points where a lot of people get jammed and somehow never advance beyond that.

~35% will jam at the Finance Executive or Finance Assistant Mgr level due to no ACCA or choosing other priorities over career progression like family, work life balance etc.

~50% will jam at Snr Accountant or Snr Finance Mgr because the need for strategic business thinking and deep understanding of Corporate Finance beyond accounting compliance is required to move on to Financial Controller or Finance Director. Most people will not posses such competencies.

~15% of the population will reach levels of truly senior managerial levels. Of course out of them, an even smaller subset will move on to multi-country role or global role at group level.

If you are a regular Finance professional who is prepared to work hard and accept the long hours during peak periods as well as load volatilty, then you can reasonably expect to end your career as 1-2 levels below a Financial Controller maybe drawing around $8-$10k per month.

Hope this helps.