Gone are the days when finance sector jobs were limited to competing for a Probationary Officer’s post in a government-run bank. Or becoming an Insurance agent of the monopolist LIC. Or toiling to be a CA or CWA.
Today finance-related work clubbed under the Banking Finance Services Insurance (BSFI) umbrella offers a multitude of job profiles. Take your pick; they all come in well-crafted and defined verticals.
As MBA (Capital Markets) student Ashish Gupta rushes off to attend his lectures for the day, the performance of bellwether stocks is playing on his mind. The second-year student of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai is now focused on acclimatising himself with Money Market mantras.
Ashish, 25, belongs to a new generation of professionals, for whom traditional sectors like engineering, medical, hotel management, even IT hold no charm. The BFSI has captured their fancy.
Jobs in millions
Industry experts believe that the pace at which the BSFI industry is growing, it will yield a plethora of employment opportunities. It is likely to employ 8.4 million people, according to an ICRA Management Consulting Services report. Credit rating agency ICRA, states in the interim report: “The incremental human resource requirement between 2008 and 2022 is expected to be about 4.2 million” (view table BFSI Calling).
Titled ‘HR and Skill Requirements in the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance Sector (till year 2022),’ the report includes contractual employment figures too. Besides on-roll employment, contractual employment spans across all sectors through intermediaries like Direct Selling Agents (DSA), Insurance Agents and Mutual Fund Advisors.
The finance sector gets bullish
The major segments of the BFSI - Banking, Insurance, Capital Markets – are abuzz with activity, which has built up since the de-regularisation in 1991. Even though the global financial turmoil of 2008 rattled the domestic BFSI a bit (due to the sub-prime mortgage crash in the US), the recovery in India was fast. The Banking and Insurance contributed 6 percent of GDP during the year ended 2008.
Atul Kanwar abandoned his media-marketing job to start afresh in this field and IT engineer Ashish took up a diploma in capital markets. “I will make career in investment banking,” he shares his future plans. Capital markets backed by foreign investment inflows, have gained traction, and terms like bear and bull markets, volatility index, invest and re-deem, no longer sound alien.
A successful career in finance requires a head for numbers. While an MBA is the preferred credential for entry, even a graduate could apply for the sales and marketing function.
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