From Practice to Fintech: Key Tips for a Successful Career Transition

Making your first move out of practice into the Fintech World.

There are always commonalities within people’s motivations and the choices they make and the move you see the most is the choice to leave practice and venture into the world of industry. This move will of course allow any budding accountant, access to the more commercially significant workings of the many businesses they have been auditing during their career in practice.

In this series of articles, I will try to lay out from my own experience, what you will learn when you engage in a particular path and where that path may lead long term.

We will also explore some of the things that fill candidates with anxieties and try to give reassurance and clarity to them.

When is the best time to leave practice?

There are generally 3 key times when Audit trained Aca’s may choose to leave practice, Newly qualified, Manager Level or Senior Manager. During this series we will explore all 3. This month we’ll focus on:

Newly Qualified:

The benefits of leaving the practice at the newly qualified level are primarily about giving you access to a more diverse array of opportunities in the marketplace. All roles across the function have “entry-level” positions that allow Aca’s to transition from practice into them. You may also have the opportunity to transition into a different industry specialisation, for example, a candidate trained in FMCG Audit may be able to secure a role in Financial Services if there isn’t a high level of regulated work as part of the role. This also applies to business size, with a wider array of Startups (Seed Funded or Series A) taking on Newly Qualified ACAs as the first move into the industry.

Money plays a part – The newly qualified ACA, generally gets a good uplift when they go into their 1st move in the industry. Assistant Managers already being on a slightly higher salary but not necessarily being any more tangibly skilled than the newly qualified ACA, find it harder to gain a role that has any uplift on their salary when they look to move as their skillsets are viewed as identical to the external market.

But which role to choose?

Financial and Group Accounting

Moving into a Financial or Group accounting role is a very strong option for any ACA who likes the idea of giving themselves the smoothest path towards becoming a Financial Controller. The technical skills you will develop are highly valued within the Industry and are essential to the smooth running of any function. Later in your career, these skills will help accelerate you passed many of your peers.

The more “commercial”, operational business partnering and Fp&A Elements to your career can be developed in these roles even at an early stage but require the candidate to have a certain level of self-determination to go looking for them internally and “to put their hand up to ask for more”.

• You’ll gain core technical skills, Audit, Stats, and Month-end. Highly desirable in finance.
• Process and control improvement are some of the achievements you can acquire.
• Business partnering and Fp&A are possible but not essential parts of the day-to-day.

Possible Career directions as a result of this role:

• Finance Manager would be a natural next step, as you would gain more of a “reviewer” than a “do-er” status in the company. You may also be given team management and more operational involvement.
• Financial/Reporting Manager is an obvious step in a larger company and would encompass more of a “reviewer” position with limited team management. This would keep you in a technical specialist position with limited commerciality.
• Fp&A Manager is possible but unlikely, as you would compete against candidates with far more budgeting and forecasting exp from an Fp&A Pathway. But if have picked up commercial experience indirectly in your role and you’re a naturally analytical person with excellent comms, there is always a chance.
• The financial controller is possible dependant on the experience and size of org. This role would encompass reviewing all work across the function, more operational involvement and some solid Fp&A involvement, with obvious team management.

Management Accounting

Moving into a management accountant position can be more common from a small practice background due to the accounts prep that is undertaken.  Big 4 ACAs tend to make this move more rarely as their training is more suited to the technical side of accounting.  But if you like the idea of developing your budgeting, forecasting and operational partnering early in your career then this could be an interesting route.

This route is usually taken by candidates who want to move into a more specialised commercial finance future in a Finance Business Partnering role, where they support the profitability of an operational function or functions and after 5-10 years, move into a revenue focussed partnering position. This path can also lead to a Finance Manager and Financial controller role, but usually within a scale-up / start-up environment (Series A-B) as candidates in this path won’t develop the same technical accounting background to qualify themselves for the more technical Controller roles that exist within bigger businesses.

• You will gain Month end, budgeting, forecasting and operational partnering.
• Process improvement and control achievements will be something to acquire in this role.
• Fp&A experience will be part of this role indirectly.
• You can learn to support operational teams.

Possible Career directions as a result of this role:

• Finance Manager would be a natural next step, as you would gain more of a “reviewer” than a “do-er” status in the company. You may also be given team management and more operational involvement.
• The financial controller is possible dependant on experience and size of org. As you would have not committed to an Audit or stats-based role, you would most likely only be able to take on an FC role in a Series A business due to their reduced complexity. This role would encompass reviewing all work across the function, more operational involvement and some solid Fp&A involvement, with obvious team management.
• Finance Business Partner would be a natural next step as you will probably have had some contact with this type of role already.
• Financial analyst or Fp&A Analyst are both possible if you have managed to take on some analytical projects or complex modelling already, by asking for more in your current role.

Financial Analyst / Fp&A Analyst

Many ACAs wish to go into this more analytical pathway as their 1st move, as they want a big change from the backwards-looking audit work they’ve been doing in practice. Moving into a role where you’re leveraging your budgeting and forecasting early on as well as doing more analytical work can be very attractive to many young accountants, but the long-term limitations of this path need to be clearly stated as this can become quite a specialised pathway, limiting candidates later career choices.

To contextualise this, candidates may find if they change their minds and wish to become a more mainstream Finance director it can be exceedingly hard to cross back into this path as your previous experience will be very specialised in one area.

• You will gain Month end, budgeting, forecasting and operational partnering from a company perspective.
• Process improvement and control achievements will be something to acquire in this role.
• You can learn to support M&A transactions if you’re in a company that’s engaged in them.
• You can take on numerous analytical projects to improve your modelling.
• You can learn about data visualization tools that are at the cutting edge of analytics.

Possible Career directions as a result of this role:

• Finance Business Partner would be a natural next step as you will probably have had some contact with this type of role already.
• Fp&A Manager would be a logical next step, where the candidate will work on increasing their closeness to decision-making or improving their team management.
• Financial Modeller is a possible direction if you so wish to specialise in that niche area.

Internal Audit

Internal audit whilst looking and feeling like a role not too dissimilar to External audit and therefore not a significant career change can add some highly desirable commercial and technical skill sets to an accountant’s CV.

• You’ll Gain a Full Understanding of How the Business Works
• You’ll Improve Your Analytic Abilities
• You’ll learn how to be a genuine Finance Business Partner.

An audit plan goes well beyond finance, of course, to include operations, strategy, marketing, and IT, as well as other areas of the business. Internal auditors need to grasp cybersecurity and data protection and many other IT concepts.

Possible Career directions as a result of this role:

• Finance Business Partner – you can transition into this quite comfortably; however, you would need to prove your core finance skill, so a relatively early exit is advisable to give you a greater chance.
• Continuation into larger and larger companies managing a team of internal auditors.
• Joining a specialist audit consultancy practice.
• Going back into a Top 6 practice at a more senior level.

Questions Commonly asked and Anxieties usually shared:

• Is this the most important move of your career?

All moves in your career are important in some way, but you will not be “typecast” or “Pidgeon holed” if you make a move early in your career that you later regret the industry. Candidates transition in and out of different parts of the function all the time. It’s much easier to transition early in your career. If you decide you’re in the wrong part of the function after 5-10 years, then that’s a different story!

• Can you only reach FD/CFO from a certain pathway?

You can become an FD or a CFO from any pathway, however, some are faster and more mainstream than others. As your career develops, you’ll also understand more about what an FD or a CFO actually does, reassuring yourself of how you can get there too.

• How long should I stay in my role before I progress?

When you’re early on in your career you are usually very keen to progress quickly and gain access to what you perceive to be more important, or more commercial leadership positions. I would always counsel ACAs to complete 18 Months to 3 years in all their early roles, as understanding and being competent when delivering the basics are very important for later in your career.

Also on a side note – The concept of being “Jumpy” is something that isn’t communicated to the candidate directly, but it’s something that’s commented on intensely by the top companies when looking at candidates CVs. The candidate may perceive themselves to be an ambitious and progressive fast riser, but the best companies in London cannot see that through a CV, all they see I, someone who leaves early, doesn’t want to be part of any company’s mission or journey and seems to be signing up to companies purely for their own ends.

If your CV starts to reflect this, then it will affect your career in ways you won’t be able to overtly perceive, you simply won’t be approached by the best companies as much and you will lose access to the best jobs.

Writing your CV

I see many ACA Newly Qualified CVs and many can look the same. They will all have an excellent academic background and a Practice that is well known. So, it is important to provide detail on the key financial challenges you faced with each client and where possible, highlight the value that you added rather than just saying I audited X or Y.

Be willing to let your personality come across on your C.V. and mention the extracurricular activities you participate in.

There is no need in Finance to produce a CV that is hugely focused on clever formatting, colourful graphics or any such art-related paraphernalia. This is a technical career, so your CV should reflect that. Simple formatting, simple presentation, but laden with interesting detail as to what you delivered and why you’re an interesting prospect to an employer.

If you want career advice or help with your search, drop me your CV at Simon.bennett@zerenglobal.com  or message me on Linkedin – Simon Bennett.

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