CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN FINANCE BASIC INFORMATION

WHAT ARE THE CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN FINANCE?


Careers in finance typically fall into one of two broad categories: (1) financial services and (2) managerial finance. Workers in both areas rely on a common analytical “tool kit,” but the types of problems to which that tool kit is applied vary a great deal from one career path to the other.

Financial Services
Financial services is the area of finance concerned with the design and delivery of advice and financial products to individuals, businesses, and governments. It involves a variety of interesting career opportunities within the areas of banking, personal financial planning, investments, real estate, and insurance.

Managerial Finance
Managerial finance is concerned with the duties of the financial manager working in a business. Financial managers administer the financial affairs of all types of businesses—private and public, large and small, profit seeking and not for profit.

They perform such varied tasks as developing a financial plan or budget, extending credit to customers, evaluating proposed large expenditures, and raising money to fund the firm’s operations. In recent years, a number of factors have increased the importance and complexity of the financial manager’s duties.

These factors include the recent global financial crisis and subsequent responses by regulators, increased competition, and technological change. For example, globalization has led U.S. corporations to increase their transactions in other countries, and foreign corporations have done likewise in the United States.

These changes increase demand for financial experts who can manage cash flows in different currencies and protect against the risks that arise from international transactions. These changes increase the finance function’s complexity, but they also create opportunities for a more rewarding career.

The increasing complexity of the financial manager’s duties has increased the popularity of a variety of professional certification programs. Financial managers today actively develop and implement corporate strategies aimed at helping the firm grow and improving its competitive position.

As a result, many corporate presidents and chief executive officers (CEOs) rose to the top of their organizations by first demonstrating excellence in the finance function.