Not a day goes past right now without one of the team at MarketInvoice interviewing someone interested in joining our company. In total we must have spoken to over a thousand candidates this year.
We’ve met all sorts of different people with incredibly varied and impressive backgrounds; but they share one unifying characteristic: they’re all excited about disrupting an age-old industry dominated by the banks. And we’re just one of London’s many high-growth scale-up fintech companies. There must have been tens of thousands of people trying to get into the fintech sector in London this year alone.
So how come all these people are interested in fintech? And, why should you also be interested?
On 10th November I’ll be joining the founders and CEOs of two other leading fintech companies – DueDil and GoCardless – in a meet-up event to answer that very question. In preparation I’ve been thinking about this topic, here are some top line thoughts. (Of course, if you want to know more, come along in a couple of weeks’ time.)
The rate of change in our society is accelerating all the time. Nowhere is this truer than in business. It took the likes of Marks & Spencer nearly 75 years to become a major force in retailing, it took Amazon about 12 years, and it took Alibaba just six years. The world’s next major retailer might require even less time than that. This acceleration of change can be seen in many other industries, from music retail, to travel – and it is powered by technology. Until recently the financial services industry had been resistant to this kind of rapid change and development. That is, until the fintech revolution began to gain real traction. Now we’re seeing almost every area of financial services being disrupted by new players, from FX, to business finance, to global payments. The unbundling of banks is well under way, and it all started pretty much here in London. It should be no surprise that people want to be at the heart of all this, working for the companies that are driving change.
Of course, one of the catalysts for all this change was the banking crisis of 2008 – 2009. Through that crisis a lot of people began to understand just how dangerous bad practice in financial services could be for our society. So of course, the flip-side is also true, great practice and brilliant products in financial services have a tremendous power to change our society for the better. If small businesses are given the funds they need to succeed without being tied into punitive bank contracts, they can grow, export to new markets, and employ more staff. People working at MarketInvoice – and in fintech more broadly – are heavily motivated by this desire to improve things, to make society fairer and more efficient. It’s a great feeling to go into work every day knowing you’re making an improvement to the world.
But it’s not just society that improves when you work in fintech. You also get the chance to improve yourself. The leading fintech companies, like MarketInvoice, DueDil and GoCardless, are using cutting edge methodologies and technology to shape our products. From the latest advances in machine learning, to new programming languages and accessing previously closed data-sets; people working in fintech are taking advantage of the best tools available. We’re also really big on training and shared problem-solving; at MarketInvoice all teams are encouraged to share best practice, and to look at legacy problems in banking by applying a data-driven and iterative approach.
Through these peer-led learning sessions, I’ve been struck by how talented and motivated the people are working at companies like MarketInvoice. The fintech industry is attracting some of the very best and brightest right now. If you want to be part of all that, come along on 10th November and find out more.
RSVP @ http://www.meetup.com/Why-work-in-FinTech/
