‘It’s a one-day match’
Sanjiv Bajaj of Bajaj Capital Ltd says there is a repertoire of job opportunities available in the financial sector

Times they are a changin,” the lyrics of song by Bob Dylon are best suited for financial sector. No other sector witnesses such rapid effects of changing time as the financial sector. Start updating yourself on every development in this field from the moment you decide to join the financial service sector. The sector is not for everyone who simply decides to do a professional course in this field but for one who enters into the field with a planned approach, observes Sanjiv Bajaj, the joint managing director of Bajaj Capital Ltd and managing director of International College of Financial Planning (ICFP). In an interview to Management Compass, he discusses the personality match you need to do for this career and the things that you need to check about an institute. Sanjiv Bajaj acquired his postgraduate diploma in business management with specialisation in finance from the Fore School of Management and holds international certificate for financial advisors from the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) London, UK. He has more than a decade of experience in the field of financial services. Excerpts:

What is the scope of finance as a career?
Finance nowadays has a great scope because it now covers banking, insurance and financial sector as a whole. Finance is a part of service sector. The service sector’s contribution to India’s GDP is more than 50 per cent and finance alone covers approximately 37 per cent. If you are working in finance you are working in a sector which contributes more than 30 per cent in India’s economy. Hence imagining the kind of growth and opportunities available in this field, is no Herculean task. You can work in financial distribution, stock broking, banks, mutual funds or insurance. With the privatisation of insurance, more than 25 companies are actively recruiting, a lot more companies’ recruitments are in the pipeline, and each company wants to be present in every part of the country. So there is a huge amount of potential and demand for professionals in insurance.
There is an increasing demand for professionals in banking because banking is transitioning from PSU banks to the private banks. The year 2009 will witness upliftment of many more restrictions and you will see a further growth. As the stock markets are getting professionalised many business channels like CNBC and NDTV give minute by minute commentary. They have made it a one-day match and have generated a lot of interest in the stock brokering. There is a demand for professionals in stock markets too.

Can people from any stream join financial services? What makes a good finance person?
People should be very careful before opting for finance as a career because it is not meant for everyone. After the profession of doctor probably it is the most responsible area you can work with. You need to update your knowledge minute by minute. Every day there will be new economic policies and new indicators. Some change will happen in the world that will effect everyone’s life. You have to realise that you are entering into a culture. So deciding one fine day that you would enter into financial services will not be of much help. Just like students prepare for entrance for medical or engineering, some background and groundwork is required before joining any professional course in this field. You should start reading the papers regularly, keep a check on business channels and know your economics. Just like any other profession you can join financial services and struggle on day-to-day basis, but in order to excel you should join it with a professional approach and as a separate vertical. There is so much diversity in the field that even if you keep shifting areas throughout your life, you will never run out of opportunities. But you will be out of the race if you don’t concentrate for six months.

Another reason why it has become important to be prepared before you join is because the mutual expectations are becoming high and the patience levels of the industry are going low. Gone are the days when a management trainee did a general MBA, took two to three years to learn various traits of the business and started producing. Now everyone with an MBA course or the specialised degree expects that the moment he joins an organisation his salary should increase by 50 per cent every year. The companies in return demand extraordinary performance because there is a pressure on the organisation too. They expect you to start producing from day one. No one has time to train you for years. Hence the decision to enter into financial services should be taken in the middle of graduation. It happened earlier that after doing Botany Hons or a graduation in any discipline students entered this field. The scenario has changed now. If you do not have a professional approach you will not be able to survive. I would always suggest a person to go for professioanlised courses that are tailor- made to train the workforce to cater to this sector only.

How does an MBA in finance fair vis-a-vis a hard core finance person like a CA or a CS? Do MBAs too need specialised training to excel in this field?
Financial services as a whole is an industry and an industry does not need the services of an accountant or a company secretary only. These are finance-related jobs, not the financial services jobs. On the other hand financial services also require people from HR, marketing and sales. The one who has an edge here is the person who has a better understanding of finance, which can only come with specialised courses. A person can go for programmes like certified financial planning, insurance certification, relationship management, PG diploma in security analysis or financial planning. These are the courses that will give you a clear head start to perform from day one. Each and every function is getting specialised in finance. A generic MBA is not going to be of great help because in finance too there are various functions. You can couple it with some super speciality course. The onus is now on students. They should preplan and not wait for the two-year course to finish.

What is the level of students who do an MBA in finance?
MBAs in finance from different B-schools have different levels. Students who manage to enter into top B-schools need not worry because their institute takes care to provide sufficient knowledge. But those who do not get into top B-schools should be extra cautious in making a choice in finance. MBA is the last stop in education. It’s the time that a person should get serious about his career. Those entering into B-schools should ensure that their institute is providing sufficient knowledge in finance. The major problem with MBA courses in finance is that they are totally outdated. The curriculum was designed some 30 years ago and the things that are relevant today are not taught. So before joining any B-school students should do a research on whether the institute has upgraded its syllabus or not. To my knowledge 60 to 70 per cent of the B-schools’ curriculum is by far obsolete.

If the curriculum is not updated in most of the B-schools, is the knowledge level of MBAs in finance sufficient enough to deliver to the expectations of the industry? When we talk of knowledge it should be theoretical as well as practical. The practical knowledge is about the products that are available in the market, about the new researches etc. In so far as this second type of knowledge is concerned, most of the B-schools are using outdated curriculum, whereas finance is a sector that changes colour everyday. Their curriculum and books teach those theories that do not hold any ground now. The case can be best explained with reference to the paper on portfolio management that teaches theory of diversification of portfolio.
According to it, one class of asset will do well and another will not do well. The industry has witnessed a boom for the past three-four years and this theory that stood true for 100 years has fallen flat and every class of asset has been doing well. So everyday there is some new theory coming up and institutes are not covering them. Finance is a field that can leave you behind if you have not updated yourself for even six months. So how can you expect to be in the picture when you read the curriculum and books written decades ago? So a person should always do research on the curriculum of the B-school before joining it.
Apart from the curriculum, things like industry interface, kinds of companies visiting the campus and internships should be taken into consideration. The industrial training in finance should be structured. It is not going to help if one person is going for training in insurance sector, another in mutual funds and some other in banking. The training should be very systematic and the entire batch should be trained in one particular area in one phase and in a different area in the next phase.

What was the need to set up ICFP?
Patience level of the industry was going down to train people in financial services after they joined. There was a dearth of a workforce whose services could be utilised from day one. Thirty-one companies, like ICICI, HDFC, Bajaj Capital and SBI joined hands and the result was ICFP to disseminate industry-integrated education in the field of financial planning.

Do you also go for campus recruitments? How is a candidate judged to be picked up for this field?
We visit a lot of B-schools and our experience has been fantastic. It is the best way of recruiting people. If you pick the right person and the right person picks you, the relation is strong and long. We have also done a study that shows that the people who are picked up from the campus have a higher probability of staying with the company for 20 years than those whom the company hires from market. In so far as selection process is concerned, a candidate is judged on his appearance, communication skills and confidence level, along with the knowledge of the field. There is not enough time to judge a person and a lot of good candidates get rejected just because they had a bad day. But a major mistake that the candidates make is that they look out for brands whereas they should be looking at the job profile. Moreover they should not get scared of the demands that the recruiting company is putting. The employer would always present worst picture just to judge whether you can cope with pressure or not.