It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme

Rupak Ghose rushed to get into banking. After graduating from the School of Oriental and Africa Studies (SOAS) in London, he got a job as an equity research analyst at Credit Suisse after a summer internship. Many of the others on the internship were from the French grandes écoles or from institutions such as the London School of Economics. Ghose – who grew up in a single parent family in London – says he stood out for sheer determination. “I was hungry and really wanted it. I had a chance. At university I might have slept late, but at that internship I had a tremendous work ethic. It was hard work, and it was passion that got me the offer.”

Ghose stayed with Credit Suisse for over 12 years. “By the time I was 24, I had my name at the top of the research reports,” he recalls. He spent four years covering media stocks and then began covering finance. Ghose was a top-ranked financial analyst, but at the top of his game in 2011, he quit.

Since then, he has done the two things that many people looking for exit routes from banking jobs consider: he has worked in corporate development and he has worked for a fintech. With the benefit of hindsight, he says bank withdrawals are not as easy as they seem.

“A lot of people think that fintech is this get-rich-quick scheme,” says Ghose. “But it’s much tougher than they imagine.”

Working for a fintech start-up looks glamorous, but it’s hard, he says. Not only do you have fewer support staff and are often on a tight budget, but you have to work harder to get things done. “When you’re in a big-name bank, people only call because of your employer,” says Ghose. “You don’t get that at a small fintech company.”

When Ghose worked in business development for Michael Spencer at ICAP, it was during a period of intense change. He was head of corporate strategy for both NEX, which was acquired by CME in 2018, and ICAP, which was acquired by TP in 2017. Ghose worked directly for Spencer, and while he has fond memories of the job, it was not a simple alternative: Spencer was a founder, CEO and shareholder, and the company was his baby.

However tempting it may seem to bypass jobs in big banks altogether, Ghose advises against it. A decade in a big bank will set you up for life, he says. It’s not just that it pays well and builds wealth, but that it teaches you how to compare yourself: “It’s good training and you learn from the best. At these institutions, you’re surrounded by people of extremely high quality that will shape your career.”

It is often precisely the network from a major bank that is of interest to a fintech, says Ghose. “The challenge for people moving from banks is what they bring to the startup table. Do you have relationships? And if you do, are they transferable? Will people still call back to a smaller organization? Do you know how to hustle? To succeed with a fintech is about your network and your ability to take that network outside the big players.”

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