MBAs Flocking To FinTech (Instead Of Consulting Or Banking)

“Consulting was fantastic — however, I had to walk away from recommendations and not get to see them go live,” noted Wharton Grad Neha Goel in a conversation with the Financial Times about why she skipped out on the traditional career path of MBAs everywhere in consulting in favor of a life in a “scrappy” FinTech environment.

“[FinTech] offered fast-moving innovation with dramatic and rapid results,” according to Goel.

FinTech founders often are business school alumni — and as their startups move into being well established firms, they are returning “home” to recruit.

In 2015, Goldman Sachs estimated that $4.7 trillion of financial services revenue was at risk of displacement from FinTech groups. And where there is money to be made, there are MBAs ready to make it — especially if they can also do it in a small environment where they can standout as a “vital member of the team,” according to one business school’s director of talent and careers.

“One of the biggest talent acquisition concerns of big banks is losing top talent to FinTech and other technology companies.”

FinTechs pay less — $99,255 is the average starting salary for an MBA graduate at a tech startup that has yet to complete a funding round — and a single year of B-School at a top-tier program can clock in at over $100,000. MBA graduates are unlikely to join FinTech companies in the expectation of high salaries — though they do go in looking for other incentives like equity in a firm that could explode.

“In the U.K., people are a lot less familiar with having remuneration based on equity rather than cash and a bonus — but not among MBAs, who come with an understanding that equity can be a more valuable reward,” one FinTech CEO told the Financial Times.