In today’s financial marketplace, your financial service business can provide a wide variety of investment products to businesses, individuals, or both. There are many financial service opportunities for you to pick from, especially when you believe it’s a niche you can thrive on. Therefore, when you consider a career as a financial service provider, any of the following can be a viable option for you.
Banking
Banking entails dealing with deposits, savings accounts, and lending money to your clients. It involves handling credit, cash, and other financial transactions for businesses and individual customers alike. For example, you’ll provide the financial liquidity customers need for their future and current investments.
Liquidity means helping customers sell their assets and investments quickly without negatively impacting the prices. You will also help them determine how much they can sell their assets and how quickly that can happen.
Advisory
When working as a financial advisor, your work will be helping people and companies evaluate their business investments. You’ll help companies with their mergers and acquisitions, which involves handling transactions between two organizations combining and working together or when a larger company acquires a smaller one.
You will also advise and help your customers make wise financial decisions concerning their asset management, including managing their real estate and mortgages. At the same time, your work will also involve advising people on financial budgeting, retirement planning, and paying their taxes. On top of that, you’ll be helping people create investment portfolios to help attract investors and partners.
Wealth Management
As a wealth manager, your job involves helping wealthy clients –those with millions and perhaps even billions, manage their complex financial portfolios and taxes. Wealthy customers will need your services to manage their estates, accounts and legal planning, and review their health care and social security benefits. Consequently, you will be helping your customers manage their charitable giving plans, sell their businesses, and file their taxes on time to avoid penalties.
If you have low net worth customers, you’ll help them grow their money and invest in financial sections like 401k to grow their wealth. When customers need your services for a 401k loan, you’ll help them borrow from their retirement savings accounts. Afterward, you’ll manage their loans and guide them on how to invest and earn profits.
Mutual Funds
When working as a mutual funds financial service provider, you will deal with financial services where multiple parties invest and share ownerships of businesses or financial stocks and bonds. You’ll work as their active financial stocks and bonds manager and sometimes serve as a passive index stock and bonds manager.
When actively managing your customers’ mutual funds, your job involves being in charge of your clients’ stocks, bonds, and other assets they invest in. You will operate as their stock-picker and focus on helping them earn stock rations; control their mutual funds’ price momentum, sales, and dividends.
In addition, you will help your customers build their mutual fund portfolios and evaluate the risks of single and macroeconomic stocks. You will place mutual funds orders by buying and selling stocks daily. You will also conduct market research to help analyze price changes and monitor markets. Ultimately, you will also ensure your clients’ mutual funds operate efficiently and profitably regardless of the market status.
Other times, your work as a mutual fund manager will be to attend committee meetings where ideas are shared on how to handle your customers’ stocks and bonds. Here, you’ll vote with other managers and choose a lead manager to manage your team by sharing their market research experience, helping you earn your clients more profits.
Insurance
When working in the financial insurance field, you will work as an agent helping individual customers and companies buy different insurance policies. Your job will entail explaining to customers various insurance policies and allowing them to choose plans that suit them.
Some of the policies you will help customers understand include property, health, life, and casualty. Sometimes, you will sell insurance annuities for customers, especially those looking to insure their retirements. Other times, you will sell policies, including those covering medical care and assisted living for older people.
For example, when you work as a property or casualty insurance agent, you’ll sell policies protecting people against financial losses. Here, you’ll focus on insurance policies paying your customers for losses they incur from theft, fire, automobile accidents, and other unpredictable and harmful events.
On the other hand, when you work as an insurance agent for companies selling policies, your job will include calling potential customers to help companies expand their client bases. You will also interview prospective customers for data about their financial resources. Additionally, you’ll focus on analyzing your customers’ insurance policies to help advise on changes and additions they can make to better benefit.
Commercial Banks
When working as a commercial bank service provider, you’ll operate as an institution offering loans and other financial services. You will serve as an individual or a business working in partnership with others to support and manage your customers’ loan transactions, especially for business needs. As an entity or an individual, you’ll be helping customers deposit their funds in different accounts and offer them loans based on their financial histories.
As a larger bank than retail banks, your commercial bank services will offer customers large loans, deposits accounts, and lines of credit. You will aim at helping small businesses grow and generate wealth through corporate banking, which involves saving with them and lending them enough money to expand.
You’ll work through a banking concept known as financial intermediation, where you allow people to keep and hold their deposits with your bank for some time. Afterward, you’ll match their savings and determine their credit scores to calculate the amount of money they can borrow and quickly grow their businesses.
Investment Banking
As an investment banking service provider, you’ll be working as an intermediary between your customers and various financial corporations. That is, you’ll be helping large organizations issue their shares in the stock markets and the initial public offering market {IPO}.
The IPO market helps you sell and exchange your customers’ shares to various investors known as retail investors. Your job will entail listing your customers’ stock shares on stock exchange markets to help them earn profits.
You’ll be responsible for preparing underwritings and counseling your clients in distributing stock shares and securities. Also, you’ll examine companies’ and individuals’ financial statements for accuracy when giving their financial history to investors before purchasing the available stocks.
Insurance Companies
Similar to working as an insurance agent, operating as an insurance company also involves assessing the risks of various events; customers can buy policies for compensation. Here, it’s up to you and your clients to agree on the number of multiple insurance policies and the types. Depending on your decision, your insurance company can operate under any of the three popular concepts- shared risks, insurance as an income investment, or reinsurance.
When you operate as a shared risk insurance company, you’ll be compensating customers even when their premiums are lower than the possible damages. All your customers will pay small amounts to share the risks of those suffering damages and losses.
On the other hand, reinsurance means your company works in an area prone to natural disasters where many people will buy insurance policies. To cover damages, you’ll pass on some risks to other large financial organizations to re-insure your customers.
Brokerage Firms
A brokerage firm sells and buys bonds and stocks or offers stock market products to its clients. When running a brokerage firm, your work is to be a middleman connecting stock exchange buyers and sellers. In this case, you’ll earn by commission when your customers sell and make more on stock markets.
Your customers will tell you which stocks they want to trade and when to sell them, and you’ll help them by researching the market and identifying the right time to sell. In some cases, you’ll guide your customers on which stocks to buy and sell and their risks. You’ll also train them on how specific trades affect their stock accounts and portfolios.
Planning Firms
As a planning firm, you will guide customers on tax planning, asset allocation, retirement, estate planning, and risk management. You will be advising customers on various ways of saving for their retirement to fund their education and businesses. Usually, you’ll create multiple plans for your customers to generate wealth and successfully run their businesses. You’ll also analyze data and identify achievable goals your clients can embrace in building their businesses and wealth.
CPA Firms
As a Certified Public Accountant Company{CPA}, you’ll provide auditing, financial consultation, and accounting services to private, nonprofit, and public organizations.
You’ll also prepare audits, review your client’s financial statements, and report their financial status to relevant securities and exchange commissions. Moreover, you’ll also represent your customers to their Internal Revenue Services for their retirement plans.
