The industries people typically enter from are:
#1 As you can imagine, 50% FinTech people come from banks or broadly the financial services industry. And here it also includes investment as well.
#2 are tech and digital industries.
- It’s easy to understand why digital – because they offer the digital use cases. As for Tech, it’s understandable when people come over from SaaS or cloud services, because most of the Fintech solutions today are in the clouds.
- Mobile phone and App store: Just imagine that for any Fintech App that target consumers, from ewallet to wealth management, it’s a big deal if the App is pre-installed in the mobile.
- Then you have IOT – it’s really important for any smart city: imagine our refrigerator automatically buy the eggs and makes the payment.
#3 are the traditional industries and government
- This is no longer news, a lot of Telcos, retail chains and food chains ventured into e-wallets: the good thing about them is they are day-to-day use cases, and all have vast customer base
- For retail, the other thing is many of the brands are getting into eCommerce and wanting to run their own ecommerce website. As such, payment functions become important too
- Then we have automobile, Home Appliances in the manufacturing side because of IOT use cases mentioned above.
- A unique industry is insurance. It’s kind of Financial Services, but operated in a different way. And now there’s InsurTech which is kind of Fintech, but not the same. I would say it’s a rather good entry point. Because of how Insurance industry is getting disrupted, if you are in insurance, you are pretty much in InsurTech. And if you are in InsurTech, you are pretty much in Fintech ecosystem and can easily move around.
- Travel and hotel: these are a bit less frequent use cases than F&B and retail. Still, AirAsia is building its super App.
- Another random card is government. Government is having more positions to look after the vertical of Fintech.
#4 is Consulting, professional services and Start-up
- Management consulting: possible to start from general disciplines and into Fintech
- Market research firms like Nielsen and Kantar who handle data. Or even better, Bloomberg that handles financial data.
- Service firms like Events companies, may have fintech discipline
- Actually any service companies that split into industries, may give you an opportunity into Fintech, Recruitment Agency is another example.
- Start-up: you can start your own loyalty or ewallet or fintech firm!
For any career, the most important is to do Career Planning, and understand what is the right career for you
You also need to do a lot of research into the industry, for example, it will allow you to find out the unobvious roles in the Fintech industry.
View my videos below for more information on starting a career in Fintech:
