Gauri Chhabra
One of the sectors that have undergone a paradigm shift and changed its face altogether is banking. For those of you who snort their nose and scoff at by calling it a boring and lackadaisical career, let me tell you ,today it has got a face lift and become a profession that involves creativity and out of the box thinking. With a plethora of financial products and services flooding the market, it has become adventurous to venture into banking.
The privatization of banks has made sufficient room for graduates in any field. If you are a Bachelor of Commerce, you can get placed as a sales executive for loans, mortgages and insurance with any of the leading banks. All you need is fluid and liquid communication skills. Similarly, if you hold an MBA in finance from a good B-school, you can expect to be placed as a relationship manager.
It is quite natural for people to confuse between a course in finance, accounts and banking as these are highly related areas. However, a course in banking is slightly different from a B.Com or a CA or an ICWA.
Getting in
For those of you who are preparing for public exam from CBSE, a threshold of 80% is required for you to seek admission in a good college. You also need to have a flair for number crunchingthat is, your mathematical skills must be strong enough to interpret and analyze numerical data.Besides, the skills to clear the interview include good communication skills, aptitude for banking, sales, marketing and money. The other skillset involved is being quite cautious and scientific in doing one’s work. The scientist’s accuracy needed for marking entries become the bent of one’s mind. Accurate working qualifies a person for a better life. It is the slipshod work and haphazard approach that become hurdles in one’s progress.
A practical exposure of opening a De Mat accountand trading in stocks, mutual funds, hedge funds and understanding of the pros and cons of availing personal loans and insurance policies, only adds to your career prospects.
You must be prepared for the Banking Entrance Exams and for the interviews that follow these entrance examinations. It is recommended that you start preparing for CAT (Common Aptitude Test) right from college onwards so that you are ready and fully prepared to clear the entrance tests and get into a top b-school heading towards an excellent career in banking. For those of you who want to go for greener pastures abroad, the CAT scores and GMAT scores after graduation enable students to get into post-graduate programs in banking per se.
For seeking entry into banking services a candidate must at least be a graduate with fairly high marks. Recruitment for the public sector banks is done through the Banking Service Recruitment Boards (BSRBs). The advertisements for recruitment appear in all major national newspapers as well as the Employment News. Recruitment is done on the basis of a written test, which consists of:
* Test of Reasoning
* Quantitative Aptitude
* General Awareness
* English Language
* Descriptive Test
The test is qualifying in nature and the marks obtained are not added in the final merit list. Except for the descriptive portion, all other sections contain objective-type questions. In Reasoning, there are verbal and non-verbal sections. In English, the test is aimed at judging the overall comprehension and understanding of the language.
The descriptive paper can be answered in English or Hindi. It is meant to judge the written expression of the candidates.
While recruitment in nationalized banks is done through the BSRB, recruitment in private banks is direct. The jobs are considered more glamorous as most private banks give preference to high value accounts. One may be able to join these banks after putting in a few years of service in a nationalized bank.
Institute Scape
Some of the institutions offering courses in banking are:
*Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, IDRBT, Hyderabad
*National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM), Pune.
*Centre for Advanced Financial Studies, Institute for Financial Management & Chennai-
*The Indian Institute of Banking & Finance Mumbai
*Indira Gandhi National Open University.
Course Cursor:
For instance, broadly, the bachelor’s degree program in Banking and Insurance offers specialization in the following areas:
* Environment and Management of Financial Services
* Micro Economics
* Effective Banking Communication
* Quantitative Techniques.
* Organizational behavior in Banking organizations
* Taxation of Financial Services
* Laws relating to Banking & Insurance
* Cost Accounting of B&I Services
* Equity Debt
* Corporate Laws governing Capital Markets
* International Business Management in Banking Organizations
* HRM in Banking Organizations
* Strategic Planning.
Career Cursor
Banking offers a plethora of opportunities for both graduates and post-graduates.
It is one of the sectors that cuts across all disciplines such as Science, Arts and Commerce.
Once you complete a selective professional course in banking, you will immediately be graduated to a position as a banking sales officer with the private banks. Besides, positions in insurance, personal loans, mortgages, collections and back office operations are always vacant and offer all bright to average students to avail the opportunities presented.
The major companies that are on a hiring spree from college campuses are banks such as ICICI, HSBC, Kotak Mahindra, HDFC, Standard Chartered, Barclay’s, and American Express.Dealing with others money also fetches a hefty pay package for you. Even as a fresher, you can take home as much as Rs 8,000 to Rs 20,000 to begin with. If you are from a tier-1 Management College such as the IIMs, you can expect banks such as JP Morgan Chase,Barclay’s, Royal Bank of Scotland, American Express, Fidelity to hire you for an excellent salary up to 8 lacs per annum. However, all this money comes with a rider. The financial markets are dynamic and ever flowing. To stay ahead of competition, you need to keep yourself updated with latest trends in financial markets and role of key deciding bodies like the SEBI so that you remain relevant in your job profile.
Reality Check
The fall of giants like the Lehman Brothers and the financial Tsunami that it we all witnessed in 2009 created a dent in the demand for banking professionals. Many top finance companies froze hiring for 2009-10. However, with strong financial fundamentals and an ardent appetite for savings, banking has picked up since 2010 and today stands tall creating a fresh demand for graduates. The enthusiasm has been revived and the sector has gained momentum.
Above all, a career in the banks is quite promising. As compared with other departments a person can have quicker promotion in the banks. Banks make us materialistic in outlook, which may be denounced by the spiritualists and other’s but which is a fact of the modern life. One can find thrill even in the most dull and uninteresting work. If Galileo can be thrilled by looking at the stars why notyou as a bank employee by finding a mistake in the entries…
Life yields charm… if we respond to it charmingly…
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