Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
Just like Law, the market for Finance isn't all that good too. Only a few sectors are still not too bad currently, such as Compliance and Private Wealth Management.
Compliance: All the regulatory standards that were recently implemented have been driving the demand for compliance executives up. Salaries have gone up quite considerably over the past few years. However, a thing to note is that this has been happening since ~5 years ago. Many banks have been recruiting and training heavily (e.g. Credit Suisse's Compliance Practicum), hence increasing the supply to the market over the past years. Not sure what the market would be like in the years ahead.
Private Wealth Management: The increasing number of rich people in Asia have driven the demand for Wealth Management executives up. However, to qualify, you would typically need to possess the characteristics for this (reasonable looks, communication skills, financial literacy and client servicing skills). Furthermore, you would usually need to have, or to be able to obtain, a large network of rich people; this is something which many fresh graduates are unable to achieve, unless they are born into a wealthy family with huge connections. And lastly, the 'RoboAdvisors' phenomenon seem to be starting to shake up this segment of the financial industry.
TL;DR: The Finance industry, just like the Law industry, may not be very pleasant currently. Think and research carefully before you leap.
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Thanks for the detailed reply. Compliance is the "in-thing" at the moment as, as you said, regulations are being tightened due to recent evidence of gross mismanagement. That said I suspect that once banks and FIs get their systems in order and proper protocols set up, the need for so many compliance workers will go down and a skeleton crew will be sufficient to keep things running. Then compliance will no longer be the "in-thing" and focus will shift to something else, leaving the compliance workers in the lurch. That said though I think its a very valid option for the present, and if we get in early I think there's a good career to be made of it?
Not sure about private wealth management but I'll definitely look into it!
Oh yes a side note about the "Robo-Advisers" sorta thing - Automation is slowly creeping up, even in traditionally skills-based industries like law. IBM has created a legal research database that intelligently searches for legal materials and writes you a cited answer to a legal problem (
ROSS). Its really amazing stuff!