In buoyant financial jobs market, employers pay premium for well-trained talent. Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America hiking junior bankers' pay.
As financial institutions come under pressure from competitors and regulators, they are driving up demand for well-trained talent.The need for financially fit graduates is high. “The [financial] job market remains very favourable for business school graduates,” says Viet Ha Tran, a senior associate director for the master in finance programs at IE Business School.
There is a growing need for financiers with professionalism coming from financial sector employers and even regulators, according to Stephen Horan, a managing director at the CFA Institute, the global association of investment professionals.
“Clients are increasingly demanding that their investment advisors have mastered globally accepted standards of practice,” he says.
On clear sign of this is the hiking of salaries by top global banks for entry level talent. Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have all increased junior employee pay, by as much as 20% in some cases.
Data from the latest Masters in Finance Rankings show private equity and venture capital offer the best remuneration — $89,000 on average. Consulting, asset management and investment banking are ranked as the top three employment sectors, each employing about 10% of all graduates.
M&A and sales and trading desks were particularly strong recruiters from the Master of Finance program at HEC Paris, says program director Jacques Olivier.
Employers are looking for graduates with strong analytical backgrounds, especially around financial modelling, according to Dr Julia Knobbe, program director at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.
“IT and digitalization are also getting more and more important in the finance area,” she says, as banks in particular hone mobile services and data analytics.
Steven Young, head of finance at Lancaster University School of Management, says that soft skills, such as critical thinking, leadership, and communication, also rank highly among finance employers.
“Prior work experience — placements, internships — is also starting to emerge as a key requirement,” he adds.
Yet competition for spots on these schemes is immense. Morgan Stanley received 90,000 applications for its summer analyst and associate positions last year; Goldman Sachs had 17,000 applicants for its 350 investment banking internships in 2013.
Perhaps the biggest shift in demand from finance sector employers is the emphasis placed on expertise around risk management, financial regulation and ethics since the global financial crisis.
“Risk management is a hot topic,” says Professor Bo Becker at the Stockholm School of Economics. Issues of financial system stability, systemic risk, and the macro-economic environment have gotten more attention, he says.
This is forcing a shift among financial training programs. Business schools have been among the most adaptive institutions.
For example, at Warwick Business School in light of the many recent financial scandals, a project was launched to incorporate ethics and sustainability into the syllabus of its masters in finance. “This is seen as a common thread permeating everything we do,” says Alex Stremme, assistant dean.
But he adds: “Unfortunately, some of our students that arrive still see a degree in finance as a way to ‘get rich quick’.”
Student Reviews
Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Modern and global
Frankfurt School provided me with one of the best experiences of my life. I was an Erasmus student for a semester and could learn a lot. I took some mainstream courses like marketing and supply chain management, but also some innovative courses like applied persuasion and event planning. The professors are not only germans but from different parts of the world, mostly with international experience. The student life is great, the FS Bulls are a great community that is definitely worth being a part of. The best part is the campus, newly built with ultra modern architecture located in on the of the best neighbourhoods in Frankfurt am Main. You can find accomodation right next to it, many student residences at a fair price.
Career Oriented
I am a first year at the Frankfurt School and have been a prt of it for only a month; however, I can say for sure that the university provides its students with all the opportunities to grow professionally and personally. The majority of the professors are or have been successful professionals who easily relate the course material with real life and make lectures enjoyable. The extra curricular activities provided by the university are also a great step to life after graduation and give a head start for the students career.
University giving its students education of high quality and career prospects.
This university has helped me gain knowledge and experiences, that I lacked in my home country. Being in a great international surrounding, I have the opportunity to prosper and learn every day. The study program is very engaging, and the lecturers help you grow.
FSFM
I’m a bachelor student at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and my overall experience was better than I expected. The classes have a small number of students, which makes the relationship with the professor better because they become easier to approach. During my years of study, I had both practical and theoretical classes, like innovation management, big data & analytics, econometrics. But the theories and concepts are directly applied to real-life problems due to many professors working in banks or consultancies, which is really good. FS supports students in finding internships and semesters abroad, but when it comes to housing not so much because it’s not that easy in Frankfurt. FS offers dorms, but it is only to a limited amount of students and the facilities aren’t the best. In terms of student organizations, there are a lot of different sport clubs for almost every kind of sport, also student consulting, student investment club, student politics club, music, arts, etc. Living in Frankfurt is good, it is very multicultural in Germany, with lots of cultural actives, museums, parks, etc. The nightlife is also nice with proper nightclubs compared to the size of the city, Gibson, Velvet, Adlib to name a few, and there also is a bar district in Alt-Sachsenhausend and a lot of bars where bankers go in the city center. The campus is not really comparable to an actual campus like the American universities, but it’s a big modern building that was built 2 years ago. I would definitely recommend it to a friend if you're willing to pay that much for uni, because there are still a lot of public unis in Germany that are comparably good (Mannheim, Goethe, LMU Munich...).
