Accounting.

It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get into IB after 6 years of experience in corporate finance. Your only chance at that point would be a top MBA program. You can of course move into other CF-related roles, or maybe even get into ER, but IB is tough with that much full-time experience.

Thanks. The issue with corporate finance is that it’s not a client-facing role, and a lot of the work consists of consolidating data from different sources, cleaning up data, and generally working through data and IT issues to get useful reports.

There’s still a human element required in that, but I would argue that it’s easier to automate than something like an IB role where you have to interact with clients.

I wouldn’t necessarily be “worried” because big companies also move very slowly, but it would help to learn basic programming and database skills to make yourself more useful in these roles.

Great article. Would you mind elaborating further on the risks of automation in corporate finance? Are the junior analysts the only major roles that should be truly worried about it?

FP&A at a larger company is quite different because at a startup, you can’t really “plan” or “budget” in the same way since business is less predictable. But the accounting skills transfer over since every company past a certain size needs those. I think FP&A at a large company could work, but Controllership or Treasury would probably be more relevant to the needs of a startup (i.e., staying alive and making sure the government doesn’t shut down the company).

Hope you are doing well during these crazy times. Seems a lot of the violence has calmed down in the cities. Great time to live in the suburbs!

I always like Corporate FP&A roles because they combined my areas of accounting and finance. I was about to transfer to the FP&A team within my company (large public company) before all of this Corona stuff started. I always liked the idea about working for smaller start ups in a corporate strategy/finance role. Would corporate FP&A at a large company translate well to a role like that within a start up?

It can be a good role at banks, and some financial services firms also pay above-market rates for roles like FP&A. But you’re still not likely to go from corporate finance *at* a large bank directly into IB at the same bank. Maybe you could get into a group like corporate development, though.

Corporate finance is considered a “support role” at most firms, so it’s still more in the middle-office category. But that’s not necessarily bad if you plan to stay there for a long time.

If you’re asking whether it’s possible to move from some other support/middle-office role into corporate finance at a bank, probably, yes. Companies recruit for CF Analyst roles from a mix of undergrads and employees already working there, so you could probably move into this role from another group.