Banking And Consulting Jobs Lose Their Popularity With MBAs

Many founders of fintech startups have MBA degrees from such schools as Oxford and INSEAD. That’s why nowadays, when they need fresh ideas and new employees, they come to business schools.

Neha Goel

Before obtaining her MBA at Wharton School of Business, Neha Goel had been a consultant at a company called Deloitte – a rather standard choice for an aspiring MBA degree holder.

However, she has chosen a less conventional career for her next step: she decided to start working in the fintech sphere. Her new company, Braintree, is a growing startup providing the payment soft for such companies as Facebook and Uber.

Neha Goel has found out about the world of fintech while she was still working at her previous company. According to her, startups offer much more freedom than more traditional firms. She liked consulting, but fintech offered her more innovation opportunities and quicker results.

According to The Financial Times, many founders of fintech startups have MBA degrees from such schools as Oxford and INSEAD. That’s why nowadays, when they need fresh ideas and new employees, they come to business schools. Financial services companies have hired no less than 20% of IE Business School graduates, and 5% of those hires were from fintech startups.

More and more fresh graduates choose to work at small, but quickly developing fintech companies. For them, it’s a place where they are valued and listened to, where their expertise counts – unlike in traditional large corporations with defined hierarchies.

This new trend is something of a threat to banks and consulting companies, as more talent continues to go to small startups. Although the percentage of such hires is still relatively low – due to smaller salaries offered by these newborn firms – the rate at which it grows looks alarming.

Nick Hungerford

Another MBA degree holder, Nick Hungerford, founded his own startup after returning to Britain from the Stanford campus in Silicon Valley. His company, Nutmeg, has eight MBAs as executives. For Nick Hungerford, the best advantage of an MBA are analytical skills. One of his employees, Aidan McGinley, a British MBA graduate, saved the company 25% in server costs by making its software apps fully automated.

Niels Turfboer

The third MBA graduate in fintech, Niels Turfboer, had occupied management positions in different corporations, before obtaining his MBA degree in New York and Spain and leaving corporate management for a small German fintech startup. He perceives fintech as a growing market with countless opportunities.

All these MBAs were not attracted to large salaries: they clearly understand that a growing startup cannot offer them much. Still, jobs in fintech give them opportunities to observe the strategies and techniques behind running startups in this industry.

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