How to become an expert in Financial services

Question

Hi former consultants,

How did you become experts in specific industries? Are there any new letters or podcasts to strengthen my knowledge of financial institutions?

I've received a full-time offer from McKinsey after my internship and will be starting in 6 months. Despite some people advising me to follow those I enjoy working with, I'd rather focus on a specific industry (financial services) that I'm passionate about.

Here are three reasons why:

Demonstrating genuine interest and a positive mindset will be easier: Following my internship, I received feedback about not being passionate enough about the companies. I can't pretend being interrested in womething I am not. However, during my MBA, I realized my affinity for the financial sector.
Providing insightful analysis will be easier: During my internship, project managers working across various industries relied heavily on experts. Clients are particularly interested in specific insights. Despite being encouraged to be flexible, I found myself judged for not adapting quickly.
Probability of encountering diverse people: Given its magnitude, financial sector consulting offers opportunities to engage with different individuals and explore various topics of interest. So, I can still find people I love working with if I focus on the financial sector

My current strategy involves:

Continuing to build sector experience before my start date: I interned in a small ESG-focused private equity firm and a small asset management firm during my MBA. I'm actively seeking a 6-month contract in a high street bank or in an investment banking
Reading key newsletters and listening to podcasts in financial institutions to expand my knowledge base. Currently, I'm focusing on the following:
- Newsletters: Financial Times, McKinsey Insights on Financial Sectors
- Podcasts: Unhedged (FT), Fintech Insider Podcasts, Talking Bank Matters (McKinsey), Mckinsey on insurrance, Insurrance tomorrow
- Any other ?

Answer 1

First of all congrats on your offer! Secondly, well done on having a strong hypothesis on which sector you would like to develop expertise in.

Before I dive deeper into answering your question, one word of caution: depending on the office you will be joining and the specific project needs when you start, you may not be doing financial services from your first case (I took the assumption you are not an experienced hire). Please keep in mind this is ok, you will still learn a lot and have opportunities to work in the area you are interested in.

Now, to your question, I see you covered a lot of ground already. One other thing I found very helpful in practice (to gain general knowledge, but also in the actual consulting projects):

Make a list of financial institutions that you are interested in. I would start with those active (ideally headquartered) in your office location
Subscribe to their investor relations publications
Scheme through their quarterly reports and deep-dive in their annual reports to try to understand:
- their business
- the macro environment they are in
Subscribe to RSS feeds / news about respective companies

As in everything consulting, don't forget to be hypothesis driven. Don't consume information just for the sake of doing so and make sure you advance your learning.

Hope this is helpful,

Ariadna

Answer 2

Congrats on the offer, and also on having a clarity of thought on your end goal. A few insights from me below.

An industry expert in consulting usually has extensive industry experience prior to joining consulting. So someone who has worked for a few years on refineries, they become an expert consultant in O&G. Similarly, if someone has worked for a few years in the Finance sector - they can become an expert consultant in FS upon joining consulting.

Consulting, and MBB especially pride on their core strength of highly adaptable and flexible consultants who can jump from topic to topic, project to project with ease.

Also note that for a good initial period, your staffing may not be what you want. So while, you have had challenges in adapting quickly - it is a key success KPI for a good consultant.

Now non-expert consultants eventually have to also specialize in specific topics. This usually happens during or after the EM stage. Till then, if you are not an “expert consultant” - you are liable to be staffed on “any” project. Career trajectories are different for consultants who later specialize, and expert consultants who join as specialized.

So when you think of consultants who are experts in specific industries - keep the above distinction in mind. You don't need to be experienced in a specific industry to necessarily specialize in it later on in your consulting tenure. You can gravitate towards it by slowly picking on the right projects.

Now coming to your FS plan. 6-months of FS experience may not be deep enough to grant you “expert” status. Although it can provide you a little bit of steer in the right direction after joining McK.

A better choice for the next 6 months could be to do something of your own instead of a high-street FS job. It will give you much more intense and 360-experience. It will also give you fuel to keep pursuing even after you join consulting and can eventually help you in steering your ship better.

Further, you should also use your 6 months in front-loading on your consulting toolkit and case-management toolkit. Happy to discuss how to do that.

Answer 3

Hi there,

First of all, congrats! :-)

Second of all, there are some great answers already so I will not further touch on the financial expertise you want to acquire.

However, there is one point you might not have on your radar right now and that is the fact that all projects require the same skill set (besides domain expertise for a specific practice).

At the end of the day, the work, tasks, and challenges you will face with a financial services client are the same as you will for an automotive manufacturer, etc.

Working at McKinsey is much more about being able to handle the way of working, rather than knowing certain things. Don't get me wrong, it is always a plus to know your way around a topic but its much more important to demonstrate strong

problem-solving
client hands
communication
resilience
etc.

All of these things are independent of the project context. All of these things are what make your reputation and evaluation.

So while on the one hand, it's important for you to get up to speed with a certain industry, don't neglect the actual consultant toolkit which is much more important.

If you are interested in learning more, I have written a book about how to acquire that, perform well on the job as a new hire, and get promoted early. It's called Consulting Career Secrets.

All the best with your start!

Cheers,

Florian

Answer 4

Lots of great answers below.

One recommendation from my side - find a person that is at least 5 y ahead of you on your track.

Ask them to have a call.

Pick their brains on what you should do, learn, focus on.

Do it.

Have another call with them and ask for more.

This was you enlist them as a mentor.

And you carve yourself a personalised learning track rather than boiling the ocean by listening to every other podcast that is out there.

Learn from the source.

And if you're soon starting in consulting, you might also find these helpful:

If you need some extra help, do reach out for a chat.

Best,
Cristian

Answer 5

You (and the other coaches) are missing the most important thing here: peers. You have to network with other people in the industry.

They are going to be the key contacts, they are going to tell you the books you should be reading, the events you should be attending, the people you should be knowing.

If you want to focus on a given industry, build your network early on! By the way, it doesn't need to be very senior people (doesn't hurt, though) - you can start with people at your own level who share that same interest in Financial Services.