Is An MBA Needed For Creating A Rewarding Finance Career?

Do you want to pursue a career in finance? Are you thinking about getting an MBA? Will an MBA degree boost your employability and offer you excellent career opportunities in the financial services sector? Let’s have a look...

MBA For A Finance Career

An MBA in finance will provide you some great opportunities to start your finance career. You can work in multinational corporations as a financial analyst, financial advisor or an accountant. To help aspirants achieve their career goals, globally reputed B-schools like London Business School, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School are currently inviting applications for the MBA programmes they offer. But can an MBA degree actually help you in building your finance career? Or is it just a waste of your money?

Most people believe that simply by getting an MBA you will be able to amp up your career. However, the fact is the progress of your career basically depends on your skills, abilities, knowledge and experience. However, an MBA qualification can definitely open up new doors to better opportunities. It depends on you how you make the most of these opportunities and use your skills in the workplace.

Is An MBA Enough?

Your MBA education will prepare you to start your finance career with confidence and knowledge so that you can add value to your company. To make the most of your MBA degree you will need to possess intelligence, specific skill sets, experience and money or the capacity to take student loans. Moreover, you also need to make the right connections with the right people so that you can work in the best positions in financial services.

According to the efinancialcareers CV database, it has been observed that if you wish to make your career in trading, then there isn’t any sense in pursuing an expensive MBA programme. Apparently, merely 7 per cent of trading professionals who have posted their resume on efinancialcareers database in the last one year posses an MBA degree.

Why You Need An MBA

An MBA can significantly help your career if you are planning to build your career in the investment banking division or IBD as more than 15 per cent professionals in this field have an MBA qualification. In the United States, MBAs are particularly widespread in this sector with almost 19 per cent IBD professionals with MBA degrees, as compared to 13 per cent in Europe.

Furthermore, if you plan on working in private equity in the future, then spending huge loads of money on your MBA can be worthwhile. The private equity sector comprises of the highest volume of MBA qualified professionals in financial services, with American private equity firms with the most MBA graduates. However, it was found that MBA graduates comprise of only 19 per cent and 22 per cent of the total PE populations respectively.

So if you are planning on building a rewarding career in the financial services sector, then you should consider the fact that most of the professionals in the financial services sector are not MBA qualified.