signals that you have the math skills to succeed as an i-banker.
Investment bankers don’t need good math skills.
Let me unroll this a bit.
Strictly speaking, an investment bank is a pre-Glass-Steagal repeal bank which declared itself to be an investment and not a commercial bank. There really ain’t no such thing any more. So we’ll talk about banks which do things in financial markets (as opposed to just take in deposits and make loans) -- that’s pretty much all big banks nowadays.
Inside any big bank there are multiple career tracks which have drastically different requirements. One of them is the traditional “investment banker” track. This generally involves providing services to companies in things like IPOs, bond issues, structured transactions, etc. An investment banker doesn’t need to know much math. He does need to be very familiar with complicated Excel sheets, though.
Another career track used to be trading and a lot of quant-oriented people went there. However because of Volcker Rule banks can’t do much prop trading any more and so are less interested in traders. Quants can still apply if they want to work in risk management, though.
Yet another career track is that of a salesperson. No math necessary, but you’d better know how to schmooze :-)
Investment bankers don’t need good math skills.
Let me unroll this a bit.
Strictly speaking, an investment bank is a pre-Glass-Steagal repeal bank which declared itself to be an investment and not a commercial bank. There really ain’t no such thing any more. So we’ll talk about banks which do things in financial markets (as opposed to just take in deposits and make loans) -- that’s pretty much all big banks nowadays.
Inside any big bank there are multiple career tracks which have drastically different requirements. One of them is the traditional “investment banker” track. This generally involves providing services to companies in things like IPOs, bond issues, structured transactions, etc. An investment banker doesn’t need to know much math. He does need to be very familiar with complicated Excel sheets, though.
Another career track used to be trading and a lot of quant-oriented people went there. However because of Volcker Rule banks can’t do much prop trading any more and so are less interested in traders. Quants can still apply if they want to work in risk management, though.
Yet another career track is that of a salesperson. No math necessary, but you’d better know how to schmooze :-)