Higher Education / Career Advice

[DYD]

Hi,

I have worked for a model validation team in a bank which oversees dominantly BASEL Advanced IRB models for consumer banking. This involves mainly quantitative works (statistics), big data analysis and programming (SAS). There has been three career options avail for me:

(1) Specialize in this field with an option of expanding the experience in corporate banking IRB
(2) Jump to a consultancy firm specializing in risk management
(3) Jump to a market risk quantitative role

All seem equally interesting for me at the moment.

1. From your experience, how much would the $ be different between 3 career options? Is there any career option that would value my skills here.
2. Which higher education (PhD, MFE, MBA) would be crucial to climb to a senior roles within each options?
3. What kind of locations / countries would the job market be popular for these roles? I am flexible in terms of relocation.
4. Is there any similar roles of model validation in a "true" quant space? I am refering to those quant working on market pricing with traders

 

[Ken Abbott]

.

1. From your experience, how much would the $ be different between 3 career options? Is there any career option that would value my skills here.
2. Which higher education (PhD, MFE, MBA) would be crucial to climb to a senior roles within each options?
3. What kind of locations / countries would the job market be popular for these roles? I am flexible in terms of relocation.
4. Is there any similar roles of model validation in a "true" quant space? I am refering to those quant working on market pricing with traders

1. Undefined. Model review is largely a product of the regulatory landscape. It's likely to remain important, but sometimes I sense a movement towards a much simpler framework.
2. It depends. Broadly speaking, there are two types of quants in finance: statisticians and PDE people. Most everyone has at least a masters. (Exception: the head fixed income quant at Morgan Stanley). Many find that a technical masters is sufficient. I'm not sue how a dissertation helps you write model reviews.
3. US, UK, HK, Tokyo - the usual suspects.
4. Most of our quant model reviewers work on pricing (as opposed to risk) models.

Hope this helps.

 

[Liam]

1. Undefined. Model review is largely a product of the regulatory landscape. It's likely to remain important, but sometimes I sense a movement towards a much simpler framework.
2. It depends. Broadly speaking, there are two types of quants in finance: statisticians and PDE people. Most everyone has at least a masters. (Exception: the head fixed income quant at Morgan Stanley). Many find that a technical masters is sufficient. I'm not sue how a dissertation helps you write model reviews.
3. US, UK, HK, Tokyo - the usual suspects.
4. Most of our quant model reviewers work on pricing (as opposed to risk) models.

Hope this helps.

To the OP, I think this is good advice also I would add to shed ideas that this is like careers in medicine or civil service where the system will be practically the same since 200 B.C. - the needs of employers change constantly in quant finance and hence the $ will change. What this actually means is that your employability is much more dependant on enjoying and being good at what you do than monotonic jobs.

Also shed any ideas of "Having X gives you job Y", I don't know about other careers but quant careers are logical to an autistic degree - e.g. friend of mine did a PhD in properties of matter which used the same maths and programming that is used to built microstructure models. Point is MSc, PhD, school of hard knocks don't matter a damn, these are useful to break in and so long as the logic is there your fine.

but "doing a PhD to get a quant job" is a disaster I've seen people fail at - you no longer need to worry about this, just focus on working on projects that help you and move on if your firm gets stupid ideas about what they or you should be doing.