A career in finance has become interesting since globalisation. It offers plenty of opportunities at every level in each sector today, making it a lucrative option, says Aryapriya Ganguly
Finance is the lifeblood of business, runs an adage. This couldn’t hold truer in today’s world. A career in finance isn’t all about money. The finance industry is multi-faceted, offering a variety of positions catering to a number of different skills and interests. Financial services have multiple sub-industries encompassing niche opportunities.
Some of the most glamorous and intense financial careers are jobs in investment banking. Investment-banking jobs deal with facilitating the issuance of corporate securities and making these securities available for investors to purchase, all while trading securities and providing financial advice to both corporations and wealthy individual investors.
Investment banking functions can be found at some large companies that might have an in-house staff evaluating strategic opportunities and corporate mergers. Hedge funds are largely unregulated private investment funds whose managers can buy or sell a wide array of assets and financial products.
Corporate finance jobs involve working for a company in the capacity of finding and managing the capital necessary to run the enterprise. This is done while maximising corporate value and reducing financial risk. Commercial banks, from large entities to local institutions, offer a range of financial services, from checking and savings accounts to IRAs and loans.
Career options available in this sector include bank tellers, loan officers, operations, marketing and branch managers.
Private-equity professionals help businesses find capital for both expansion and current operations. They also provide financing for a number of corporate business transactions, such as managed buy-outs and restructurings. Financial planners help individuals develop plans that will ensure their present and future financial stability. Typically, they review a client's financial goals and generate an appropriate plan for saving and investing that fits the client's individual needs.
The plan may focus on wealth preservation or investment growth and may even include estate and tax planning. Finance jobs in the insurance industry involve helping businesses and individuals anticipate potential risks and protect themselves from losses.
Financial jobs exist in almost every company in almost every industry. Financial services companies have skilled people at all levels inside the company, including leaders who develop and articulate sound strategic visions and managers who make value-adding decisions. The key to individual success is to research, locate and land the financial job that has the greatest compatibility with your skills and interests.
Towards this aim, for a graduate, obtaining a degree is just the beginning. But it’s a critical beginning. Degrees that demonstrate a combination of verbal reasoning, intuitive, mathematical and quantitative analysis are an excellent foundation for employment as an economist or financial economist in industry, government or international organisations, among others.
Students are required to learn about investments, asset pricing, derivatives, portfolio management and corporate finance through the coherent lens of financial economics to get a practical and theoretical flavour of what awaits them as professionals. The degrees, accordingly, should provide the economic reasoning, quantitative skills and institutional knowledge required by financial economists to solve practical problems arising in finance. The critical and analytical skills a student is likely to hone and nurture from such a degree are attractive to investment banks, commercial banks, fund managers, risk assessment industries, securities traders and the financial services sector generally as well as in management consulting.
With a variety of case-based corporate finance insights as well as mathematically rigorous analysis, there is enough choice to satisfy everyone’s intellectual curiosity with such a degree, tailor-made for a career in the vibrant world of finance.
(The writer is assistant professor with The Indian School of Business and Finance, New Delhi)