Careers in the Financial Services Industry
You can't escape making financial decisions. From those early decisions about how to spend - or save - your pocket money through to decisions about pensions and easing your life after retirement, financial decisions will play a fundamental part in your life.
As soon as you leave school, and often earlier, banks send attractive offers to persuade you to pen an account with them; devoted grandparents have often already opened savings accounts, or invested money for you in a national savings certificates or premium bonds. If you go to university you'll will have to take out a loan to pay your fees - and in the current student climate it will be hard to avoid having an overdraft; and once you're earning, you may start making larger investments, saving for the future with an ISA (individual savings account) or take out a mortgage to help you buy your first home.
All of these activities - bank accounts for paying in your cheques, loans, savings, investments, and mortgage - are everyday examples of financial services "products".
Financial Services is the industry that encompasses a wide range of activities to do with personal, industrial and commercial finance. There's much more to it than your High Street Clearing Bank, although that's probably the face of financial services with which you're most familiar. But supermarkets like Tescos, Safeways, and ASDA now offer banking services, allowing you to make deposits and draw out funds. Marks and Spencer has offered pensions, savings and investments for several years. Insurance companies are moving into banking, just as banks move into insurance. And in the financial centres of the world, like the City of London or Wall Street in New York fortunes are made and lost in the stockmarkets.
It's very difficult now to draw a line around any sector in the financial services industry and list the services typical organisations in that sector will provide.
Broadly, in the financial services industry you have:
- Commercial banks and building societies - dealing with transmission of money, loans, mortgages, pensions, insurance, foreign currency, trade finance, stocks and shares … and a wide range of other investment and lending services.
- Supermarkets, airlines, large motor car companies etc. - retail financial products such as mortgages, pensions, tax efficient savings accounts, ordinary savings and current accounts
- Investment banks - dealing with corporate finance and engineering such as mergers, acquisitions and take-overs; capital market activity such as bonds and equities (shares); stock market analysis; fund and portfolio management, derivatives including foreign exchange hedging Insurance companies
- Insurance and re-insurance - providing financial protection against risk for the cost of a premium
- Independent financial advisers - helping people plan for their financial future
- Broking firms - buying and selling stocks and shares
- Unit and investment trust companies - financial organisations concerned with earning money for their investors through techniques such as portfolio management
The financial services sector is an exciting industry in which to work. Technology is changing it out of all recognition. Can you believe that just 30 years ago there were no credit cards in the UK? And no ATMs (cash point machines) either? Now most people pay by debit or credit cards, undertake financial transactions by telephone - or even through the Internet on their PC - and many papers forecast that it won't be long before electronic money on a plastic card, such as Mondex or VisaCash, replaces the coins and notes in your pocket (so what will we all do about pocket money then?).
A Career for Life!
In the old days young people entering a bank or insurance company worked their way up from the bottom, and probably stayed with that organisation all their working lives. Those were the days when banks were expanding and recruiting heavily. Banks do still recruit, but the numbers are smaller the hours are more variable (with many organisations opening on Saturday and Sunday) - and there's certainly not a job for life anymore! On the plus side, there's much more opportunity to move around, and there are plenty of openings in other parts of the financial services industry. As an example, financial advisers and planners whether working in a bank, building society, insurance company, estate agent, or independently - are increasingly in demand to help people plan their financial futures.
If you have the right qualifications you can move from a general area into a specialist financial area - and there are plenty of openings for IT, personnel and marketing specialists too! That's not to say you don't have to work hard once you've obtained the qualifications, of course!
Most employers will look for one or more of the following, depending on the sector an entry level you're aiming for:
- Good GCSEs (5 at c and Above), including maths and English, and A levels
- Certificate in Financial Services Practice (an Institute of Financial Services Qualification)
- Certificate for Financial Advisers (if that's the area you're interested in)
- Degree - perhaps in a business or financial subject.
- National Vocational Qualifications - such as customer services, relevant to all sectors
- Other relevant professional qualification
The ifs School of Finance is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Chartered Institute of Bankers. If you'd like information about the qualifications offered by the ifs School of Finance - which can pave the way for a career in financial services contact them at:
The ifs School of Finance, IFS House, 4-9 Burgate Lane, Canterbury, Kent CT1 2XJ: http://www.ifslearning.com
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