In-depth Analysis of Finance Jobs: Choosing the Right Direction Matters

• Article
• 2024-08-08
• 19 Comments

In July 2022, the news of a CICC employee's wife posting her husband's income certificate online, which led to his suspension, quickly rose to the top of the trending searches.

According to the income certificate she shared, the post-90s employee earned an annual salary of millions, which was astonishing.

The income in the financial industry once again became a hot topic for people to discuss over tea and dinner.

According to data from the Carp Data Statistics, the annual undergraduate enrollment plan for finance and economics majors is as high as 250,000, accounting for about 7%, which is a significant major category, attracting the attention of many students and parents.

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Therefore, today we have specially made this special topic to explore the employment prospects of the financial industry.

The financial industry is the main industry that provides talent for finance and economics majors, which mainly includes banking, insurance, securities, trust, leasing, and other sub-industries.

The outstanding characteristic of the financial industry is its high concentration, and it is strictly regulated by the national government.

The scale of operation of leading enterprises can account for about 80% of the total market.

Therefore, we use the research method of leading enterprise data to clarify the talent demand situation of each sub-industry.

From a macro perspective, the talent attraction of the financial industry can be summarized in eight words: attractive, internal worries, external troubles, and opportunities.

It is undeniable that the financial industry is still one of the most attractive industries in the economic field of the whole society, but the popularity has declined since 2017.

One of the reasons why the financial industry is the most attractive is that the income of practitioners is relatively high.

According to the 2020Q3 survey of actual and expected average annual salaries of high-end talents in various industries on the Liepin website: the compensation of the financial industry is still the highest in the industry.

The second main reason why the financial industry is the most attractive is that most employers are large enterprises with high risk resistance and relatively stable positions.

The threshold for establishing financial industry enterprises is very high, and there are almost no traces of small and medium-sized enterprises.

According to the statistical data of the Banking Regulatory Commission in June 2021, there are more than 4,800 financial institutions registered in China (including banks, insurance, securities, and other enterprises), all of which are large and super-large enterprise levels.

The financial industry entered a rapid development stage after 2000 and reached its peak around 2017.

After that, the growth rate gradually slowed down, but there is still a large growth space.

From the current data analysis, the basic situation of the financial industry's strong attraction to candidates has not changed.

The financial industry can provide high salaries and stable positions in the turbulent economic environment, which can still attract many excellent candidates.

After 20 years of rapid development of China's financial industry, the internal growth momentum is objectively insufficient.

It can be seen from the annual reports of large banks, insurance companies, and securities companies.

Especially after 2017, the central government strengthened the supervision of the financial system.

Campus loans, P2P, and illegal lending and other businesses were severely punished, and the rapidly developing financial industry was put on a tight headband.

Especially the listing of Ant Financial was blocked, and the financial industry bid farewell to the wild growth period.

Companies in the industry had to re-examine their businesses and adopt more conservative and conservative development strategies, which directly affected the planning and layout of human resources.

According to the data in the analysis report "Review and Outlook of Chinese Listed Banks in 2020" released by Ernst & Young Hua Ming Certified Public Accountants, the income of large listed banks continued to grow, but the growth rate has declined significantly, and the trend of rapid growth in subsequent income and profits is weak.

A large number of online loan companies and P2P companies have gone bankrupt, and banks, insurance, and securities industries have reduced their recruitment scale.

"Reducing staff and increasing efficiency" has become the main theme of human resource layout for all enterprises in the industry.

These messages have been fully disseminated on the Internet and have had a certain impact on parents and candidates, and the popularity of financial majors has continued to decline.

For a long time, the salary treatment of the financial industry has been the highest in the social and economic field, especially the treatment of investment banks.

However, in recent years, some fields of the technology industry, such as chips, artificial intelligence, and big data, have frequently appeared in the job market with positions offering 300,000 annual salaries for undergraduate graduates and millions of annual salaries for doctoral graduates, which has dimmed the once brilliant positions in the financial industry and attracted the attention of more high-scoring candidates.

The attractiveness of financial majors has significantly declined.

The impact of technology on the financial industry is disruptive, from trading, accounting, management, to the currency itself.

All financial institutions are increasing their investment in financial technology.

According to data released by iResearch Consulting, by 2024, the investment in the financial technology field by the financial industry will exceed 50 billion yuan.

The application of financial technology in the entire financial industry is a future trend, and the demand for related talents is also growing.

The following text will further analyze the talent demand of each financial sub-industry: 1) Banks Banks are the largest employers in the entire financial industry (excluding insurance agents in the insurance industry).

According to data from the People's Bank of China, in the past decade, the number of bank employees in China has increased from 3 million to 3.96 million in 2019, with a net increase of nearly 1 million.

However, after 2017, the growth rate of employees has significantly slowed down, and even tends to be negative growth, especially the total number of employees in state-owned large banks continues to decline.

According to the annual reports of ICBC, CCB, BOC, ABC, and China Merchants Bank from 2018 to 2021, the number of employees of ICBC, ABC, and BOC has continued to decrease for four consecutive years, and only the number of employees of China Merchants Bank and CCB has slightly increased: the reduction of employees is mainly concentrated in the reduction of counter staff.

A large number of basic and simple businesses are gradually replaced by intelligent terminals, and more and more urban populations choose to use mobile banking and online banking services.

People being replaced by machines has become an irreversible trend.

According to the statistical data of the annual report of ABC, the number of counter staff of ABC has decreased from nearly 150,000 people accounting for 29.8% in 2015 to 74,000 people accounting for 16% in 2021.

Because the banking industry has a highly concentrated feature, the development trend of employees of the four major state-owned banks can basically represent the trend of the entire banking industry.

Therefore, we speculate that for a long time in the future, the demand for front-end basic business personnel in the banking industry will show a significant contraction trend.

However, not all front-line personnel of banks are decreasing.

According to the statistics of the Banking Regulatory Commission, the number of outlets of urban commercial banks and rural commercial banks has continued to increase in the past three years, and it can be speculated that the number of front-line employees of urban commercial banks and rural commercial banks may slightly increase.

Coincidentally, the four major banks have all increased their investment in financial technology in recent years, and the demand for talents in the field of financial technology is strong, which can provide competitive positions.

Financial technology has become one of the most frequently used words in the annual reports of listed banks.

Since 2018, CCB and ICBC have disclosed their investment in financial technology in their annual reports.

According to the financial report data of the two major banks, they have all made significant investment increases in the field of financial technology.

In 2021, China Merchants Bank invested 13.291 billion yuan in the field of financial technology, a year-on-year increase of 11.58%.

The field of digital currency is also an opportunity for China's financial field to overtake on the bend, and it needs many top talents to join.

2) Insurance The insurance industry is also an industry with a huge demand for talents in the financial industry.

Although there are nearly 200 insurance companies approved by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission in China, in fact, the concentration of insurance business is very high.

The total business volume of the top four insurance companies: Ping An Insurance, China People's Insurance, Pacific Insurance, and China Life accounts for about 80% of the total industry, and the total business volume of the top ten insurance companies accounts for more than 95% of the total industry.

Therefore, we use the same method as the banking industry survey to judge the heat and trend of industry talent demand based on the annual report data of the four major insurance companies.

First, according to the annual reports of the three major insurance groups in the past four years, the talent demand of insurance companies is approaching the banking industry, with a slight contraction in stability: the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly the biggest "black swan" in the world in the past two years.

The pandemic has greatly changed the direction of economic development in the world and has also had a huge impact on China's insurance industry.

Under the epidemic situation, the offline agent channel is greatly limited, and the online network channel highlights its value.

It can be foreseen that even if the epidemic is effectively controlled in the future, the online channel will continue to play a greater role.

In 2021, affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Ping An Insurance's agent channel achieved a new business value of 42.913 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 37.1%.

The bank insurance channel, telemarketing channel, and internet channel continued to grow, and the number of online customers increased by 16%.

Although the epidemic will pass, the digitalization and technologicalization of the insurance business end-to-end is an irreversible trend.

Although the financial report data listed here is from Ping An Insurance, the combination of technology and finance is not an exception in the insurance industry.

Financial technology frequently appears in the annual reports of major insurance companies, and technology talents will lead the trend of talent recruitment in the insurance financial industry.

At the same time, although China's financial industry has a relatively long history of development, it is still extremely short of high-end talents such as analysts and actuaries.

The lack of high-end talents is still the main theme of the current situation of talents in the financial industry.

3) Securities In the Chinese market, securities are relatively small in scale in the financial industry, with a total number of practitioners of about 340,000.

In the short term, the securities industry continues to be subject to strengthened supervision by relevant national departments, and the growth of practitioners has been weak in recent years.

In the long term, the securities industry has a relatively large development prospect because the Chinese stock market is about to usher in a comprehensive registration system, which will inject new vitality into the market, trigger accelerated market development, and the demand for related talents will inevitably increase, attracting more attention from high school students.

4) Internet Finance Internet finance is also a field that will develop rapidly in the financial industry in the future.

In recent years, it has experienced a roller coaster development process in China.

Although there have been many problems, the development will continue.1.

Internet payment is a battleground that giants must compete for.

2.

P2P lending, which entered China in 2007, developed rapidly but eventually encountered numerous problems and was halted by regulatory intervention, leaving a mess behind.

The emergency stop of the P2P sector had a significant impact on the reputation of the financial industry.

3.

Other forms of online lending have always existed and will continue to do so.

In summary, the financial industry remains an industry worth entering, and the integration of finance and technology is the trend and direction for the future.

If you want to have a good development and achievement in the financial industry in the future, choosing the direction of financial technology is definitely the right choice.