Mumbai to Edinburgh: charting a finance career with Standard Life

I am from Thane, India. During my undergraduate years I was trained as an accountant. I liked it. It helped me to become a chartered accountant in the Institute of Charted Accountants of India (ICAI). Do you think CFA exams are hard with 30-40% pass rate? ICAI exams have 10-15% pass rate. So I am really proud that I have passed those exams. 

Once I started working, I realised that I wanted to change my career path a bit. For eight months I worked in UBS in India where my focus was on analysis of data related to financial markets. This sparked my interest in Finance. I decided to get an MSc degree from one of the UK universities in Finance or Accounting and Finance to get a better understanding of this sphere. I also wanted to find a job in a UK financial company. UK is one of the world global financial centres. I thought that gaining such experience would help me to build understanding of the industry and skills which I can then use anywhere.

I was accepted to four universities and had some hard time thinking where to go. Finally, I decided to go to the University of Dundee School of Business for the MSc Finance programme. The key things which attracted me – relatively low cost of living and flexibility of the programme. By flexibility I mean a lot of optional modules and only few compulsory ones. I could tailor the programme to my interests and abilities. The key argument against was that Dundee is far from London. I was afraid that it would limit my ability to find a job. It appeared to be not an issue once I actually started looking for a job as interviews were mostly online.

I arrived in January 2022. Dundee felt very different from my home city. No crowds on the streets. No traffics jams. Nice fresh air. My two key problems were to find a place to live and to get social connections. I found myself a student accommodation where I lived for several months before finding a flat to rent. To help with social connection problem the university offered me several induction events and connected me to a WhatsApp group for students from India. All these efforts from the university helped me to feel settled in Dundee and feel comfortable rather quickly. 

Another problem which I faced straight from the beginning was Econometrics. I had quite light module on statistics back in the university in India and forgot most of it by the time I arrived to Dundee. I quickly realised that it was too much of a challenge for me. I discussed this problem with my advisor of studies (every student in the business school has one by the way). The solution was to switch to MSc Accounting and Finance. This programme gives option to undertake a quantitative methods module instead of econometrics. At the same time the desired level of flexibility in terms of other modules was close to the one on the MSc Finance. It was easy to arrange the switch.

Since August 2022 I started searching for a job in the UK. I thought that it would be great to have certainty straight after graduation. By December I have passed five interviews for positions in different financial companies and got offers from two of them: Bank of America and Phoenix Group. The things I studied in the business school helped me on the interviews. What I learned on Investment Management module was especially helpful. Dr Murat Mazibas taught this module. He came from the financial industry. He managed to show how the material of the module was linked to the industry and tried to make assignments as practical as possible. I.e. one of the assignments was to manage a portfolio of stocks with the use of Bloomberg terminal.

I picked the job in Phoenix Group. The company has around 12 million clients with overall assets of close to £300 billion. The role is slightly different with what I did in UBS back in India, but it gives me a different learning experience. Plus  it is in Edinburgh. The city I love J 

The end of my studies in the business school was officially on 13th January 2023. My first working day in Phoenix group was on 16th January 2023.