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Anushka Chhikara (host): Hello, and welcome to Wiser Voices, an insightful podcast for learners and career makers. I'm your host, Anushka Chikara. And today we're exploring the world of banking and financial services with Arvind Sampath. He's a prominent figure in the BFSI spacE with over 25 years of hardcore finance experience in institutions across size and complexity, like Fullerton India, ICICI Securities, and Standard Chartered Bank. Our conversation today will be a unique opportunity for people interested in growing their career in this space. Hi, Arvind. Thanks for joining us here today.
Arvind Sampath (guest): Thank you, Anushka. Great to be here.
Anushka: So we've gotten a rundown of your pretty impressive resume, but I want to take it back, right? I want to understand what you studied in college and how you got into the BFSI space.
Arvind: Sure. I'm an engineer and an MBA. I did my engineering from Pune University, way back in 1989 in petrochemical and petroleum engineering. I then went on to do my MBA in finance from FMS Delhi. At that time is when I really got involved with this domain in general. I joined ICICI right from campus, because at that time it was believed that it's the best ground for training and creating leaders. Very true words. So many CEOs are from that group. I moved on then to Standard Chartered Bank in a slightly different role in markets. And then from banking, I took the leap to NBFCs or non-bank financial institutions, Fullerton India, and then for a brief while at Poonawalla. I also picked up an executive learning program at Harvard, something like a mini MBA, a couple of years back, just to stay current with my skills.
Anushka: So I think, you know, what's very common with a lot of people in India that you speak to, they started out doing engineering and then just switch their career paths. So what was it that helped you identify that the kind of skills required for engineering didn't necessarily align with you, but the ones for BFSI did align with your particular interests?
Arvind: Yeah, that's a good question. The way I thought about it was in terms of job prospects, and my own personal skill set. So job prospects, and at that time, were more focused towards management, more focused towards banking. See, an important statistic we must remember is, if the GDP of a country is, say, X, BFSI tends to grow at two and a half to three times of that. When we say BFSI, what do we mean? We mean banking. Banking affects from two parts. We make investments through deposits, and we take loans. This is both sides of a bank's balance sheet. Moving on, in BFSI, we have lending. Lending is again, like I said, done by banks, but also by non-banks, the NBFC sector. Two more important aspects of BFSI are asset management, mutual funds, very common these days with most youngsters having an SIP, and insurance. Insurance is basically just protection. Insurance can be seen as a replacement of an earning member. So to sum it up, banking, lending, asset management, mutual funds, - 03:49] and insurance, that's the gamut of BFSI. So when I considered what is really growing in the market, what the country would need going forward, I thought I was better placed being in BFSI rather than core engineering. A lot of the engineering offers and further studies were actually overseas, which also made it easier for me to decide to stay with management, Anushka.
Anushka: Yeah. And you've given us a pretty good overview of what the space is like, but I'm curious to know, you know, over your years of experience, what are some changes you've seen in the space that make it what it is today?
Arvind: Sure. Very, very, very good question. And so much has changed. And if we just look at our own behavior in terms of banking or shopping, a lot of it would have to do with the changes in the industry. Let's first look at, you know, how banking has changed. Earlier, we had to go to a branch. There were strict branch timings. As an anecdote, 12.30 pm on a Saturday, branches would close. So we had to run, leave our classes and rush into the bank, and then they would close the door of the bank for us to withdraw our own money. Okay. So that's how banking has changed. I would argue that our payments systems are one of the best in the world, whether it's UPI or the ability to transact through a mobile for payments, you know, whether they're NEFT or person-to-person, person-to-merchant payments. This infrastructure is one of the best in the world. And that's really something to be proud of. So that's how banking has changed. Now, let's look at how account opening has changed. Earlier, you had to fill forms and triplicate, wait for a week to simply open a bank account. Now, that can be done remotely, simply because we have Aadhaar, we have Video KYC, and all this is secure and accepted by the regulators as good as physical verification. So, account opening has become remote, which then opens the gamut of everything. You can take insurance policies at home, you can open mutual fund, SIPs at home, you can open bank accounts at home. That's how the enabling infrastructure has changed. So the payments infrastructure, the identification and verification infrastructure, and the gamut of products, simply because the capital market has evolved, and is very, very efficient. I think volumes in our stock market are one of the highest in the world, in terms of derivatives. So again, these three ecosystems, you know, verification, payments, identification, have helped grow, helping each other. These three ecosystems have helped the industry grow to something very, very powerful and unique.
Anushka: You know, hearing that reminds me, I just got like a flashback to my childhood where I would see my parents banking or filling out a check and being so intimidated and thinking, when I grow up, I have to figure this out.
Arvind: I have a lovely story here. I remember leaving a lecture, a live lecture at 12.29pm on a Saturday, to be able to run into the branch before 12.30pm, where they would lock the doors, else I had to go hungry for the weekend. But today, do we even worry about how much money we have in our pockets or purses? Not at all. It might be any day of the week, any time of the day. This is true reform. And you know, while we get used to it, and we adopt to new technologies, it's good to remember all this has happened, you know, sort of within one, one and a half decades, where we've moved completely from paper checks, and filling out deposit slips to something like a UPI, through various platforms, could be Google Pay, could be Paytm, and so on.
Anushka: Yeah, and I think your career has been so uniquely timed in seeing that exponential growth and change in the industry in our country.
Arvind: The way we communicate has changed in my career time. I still remember those phones, which we had to turn. The way we consume content has dramatically changed from terrestrial cable, and today, OTT, and banking and payments. The entire world of finance has dramatically changed. So Aadhaar, video KYC, and payments, I think has changed our life dramatically. And why do we mention this? Because these are the enablers for the industry to grow and modernize and add on many more products.
Anushka: Right. So, you know, now I want to talk about a bit more on the work culture side, right? So what is it like working in the BFSI sector, maybe on a high level and also on a day to day basis?
Arvind: It's an industry where the brightest do congregate. People comfortable with numbers, people comfortable with large numbers, usually end up in finance. So that's one thing to remember. Two, as an industry, since we are always handling someone else's money, could be the public, could be someone, it could be the companies. It's an industry which is given to a lot of discipline, procedures, policies. This doesn't mean there's no fun here. Like I said, all the startups, the fintechs are a very fun college to place. But when you're in a fiduciary capacity, when you're in a capacity of holding trust, holding someone else's money, naturally, you have to be a lot more disciplined yourself and be agreeable to procedures, policies and audits, which is what this industry has a lot of as well.
Anushka: Yeah. And while this industry is very disciplined and very structured in the career, I also want to ask you, what keeps you inspired in growing your career within an industry like this?
Arvind: Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it. So I'm in an industry where the news and the themes change every day. Today, we're at a sad moment where there's a war on, Israel and Hamas. So the markets and the policies and the interest rates are slightly affected by that. A few months back, it could have been oil prices. A few months before that, it could have been an election. Everything can affect the markets. And what affects the markets affects our decisions as a CFO, or as a person looking to raise funds, or as a person looking to deploy funds. So here is an interesting industry where the news and the themes keep changing every few months. So that makes it very exciting. As we always believe the market is supreme. We may have our thoughts or views in the medium term, that interest rates may move in a certain way, but the market always is supreme and tends to come with new explanations and new thoughts. That plus all the technological innovation really keeps me very, very inspired and very, very fresh in the industry. So these two things have really helped in the last two decades.
Anushka: And does that also translate into when you're leading teams in your work as well?
Arvind: Absolutely. This work is possible. It's amenable to remote working. BFSI is amenable to remote working. And simply the use of technology allows us to do so much more than it was earlier. Earlier, there were physical branches. Earlier, there were physical locations where work used to happen. That has now completely transformed electronically. Overlay that with secure payment networks, and you have a wonderful solution. For example, you might be shopping on a website at midnight, and you need finance. Earlier, neither of the two were possible. Today, you can be shopping at midnight, you can get finance in a few clicks in a few seconds. And the entire thing, entire transaction can go through because of all the pieces that are involved. There's a loan, there's a verification, there's a purchase. So that's really how, that's really at the cutting edge of where we are today.
Anushka: Yeah. So what I'm getting is the fact that technology is so rapidly evolving, the space keeps everyone excited who's working within it as well.
Arvind: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Anushka: So tangentially, I wanted to ask you people who are getting into this career space or are also growing their career in BFSI, what are the top cities or geographies in India to do that?
Arvind: Oh, that's an easy one. The top three cities are Mumbai, Mumbai and Mumbai. That's just a joke. But I see a lot of great work happening, you know, in Delhi, Bangalore, Pune. So there are alternative centers that are opening up. Like I said, the entire industry is amenable to distribution, physical and online, but bulk of sort of the headquarters or the decision making is in Mumbai. So if someone is serious in this industry or if someone is serious about a BFSI career, sooner or later, she's going to be in Bombay.
Anushka: Okay. And if I got it correctly, you mentioned at some point that there is some scope for remote working in this space as well. Can you talk a bit more about that?
Arvind: So any work which is sort of detail oriented has got to do with some verification checks. Those can be done remotely. This industry is also very heavy on relationship, like relationship banking or relationship management. So RMs usually, you know, used to visit physically. So that part is not amenable to online working. But wherever there is any files or verifications or balances, that can yet be done remotely.
Anushka: Okay, and, you know, since you mentioned it, it just makes me curious. Can you give us what the confluence of hard and soft skills are that really make a person's career accelerate in this field?
Arvind: Absolutely. It's an industry which uses both skills, right? Hard skills in terms of comfort with numbers, you know, knowledge of regulations, knowing the principles, knowing the verifications, being comfortable with all of this as one are the hard skills. Soft skills are used where, you know, you're trying to close a purchase, close a sale on the relationship side, you know, either you're an RM in a bank, you're trying to close a loan, or a credit card, or you're selling a policy, or you're selling an SIP or a mutual fund investment. What does this mean? Your domain knowledge has to be excellent. You need to know everything about that mutual fund, what the Industry is doing, how the performance of the fund has been. At the same time, you need to evoke the trust in the customer, because this industry is huge about trust. You're always handling someone else's money. And that's something people will hold very dearly. So someone they trust, they will part with their money, either for an investment or insurance, or they will take a loan from a bank which they trust will be fair with them.
Anushka: Okay, so related to this, I wanted to ask you, what are some places where people's careers in this space typically falter? Are there some common mistakes that you have noticed through personal experience or from people around you?
Arvind: Sure. So some of the places where things could fall off are when ethics are compromised. You know, ethics are important for everyone in every industry, but much more so here, where there's a lot of trust placed on an individual. So if ethics are compromised, definitely careers would falter. The other thing that I can think of at the moment is, you know, remaining current, updated, and picking up skills along the way. So we spoke of the technological changes that we've seen. Staying abreast of them, you know, being fully aware of what's happening in anywhere on the globe can affect decision making in this market. Think of someone whom you've asked somebody to invest in, you know, mid-cap, or in some sector of the market. You are now fully responsible to keep your customer updated about the developments or the risks in that investment, similar for a loan, and very, very similar for an insurance product as well. So staying abreast and ethics are the two big, you know, pillars, which can cause a person to tip over and fail in this industry.
Anushka: Yeah. So let's dig a bit deeper into that second part, right, of staying abreast with the latest knowledge. Can you tell us some spaces in BFSI that people should focus on reskilling and upskilling to really grow their career trajectory?
Arvind: Certainly, I think people should, if serious, they should, you know, pick up courses in finance, banking, be fully aware of what's happening in asset management and insurance. There are a plethora of courses available in all of these, whether it's personal finance, which is managing your personal wealth, or corporate finance, how companies can raise money, what kind of security or collateral that they would need, what kind of banks, you know, specialize in which type of markets overseas or local. All these are available in terms of training, in terms of skills. There are also a lot of certifications that are provided by regulators for which there are courses available for us to clear those certifications. For example, if I'm an advisor for investments, I need a certain license for which there are courses which can help you clear those.
Anushka: Okay. So we're pretty much at the end of our interview, but I just wanted to do a quick lightning round of a few questions. So imagine you can time travel back right now to speak to your younger self, right, who's just starting out his career. What's one piece of advice that you would give him?
Arvind: I would say, move out of your comfort zone. I have done, you know, similar things or technical things. I've gone deep into a subject, rather than spreading myself across various domains. I would probably, you know, ask myself to go out of my comfort zone and do a couple of other things, operations, marketing, legal and stuff like that.
Anushka: Okay. And we've touched upon this a little bit, but I do want to ask you again, what's one mistake that people should avoid when they're entering this career space?
Arvind: Avoiding upskilling or avoiding picking up another degree is something that is a red flag in this industry. So every few years, maybe every three years or four years, they should pick up a skill, pick up a certification, do a course, do a training, stay absolutely current and think a couple of years ahead. Like I said, we have the advantage of having one of the best banking payment infrastructures in the country. How that could change or transform the landscape is what they should focus on and look at those applications. So one big mistake would be to stick with what you want to have studied and not pick up skills down the line.
Anushka: Yeah. And my final question is, what's one book, video or piece of media that you would highly recommend to people?
Arvind: I enjoyed this book on Ikigai by, you know, Francesc Miralis and Garcia. I thought that gave me a great meaning and an understanding of how, you know, how we can experience life rather than thinking of it as a drudgery. So that was really liberating. In terms of content, you know, I like to see anything which is like a heist related movie. I enjoy those kinds of contents, either series or movies.
Anushka: Does it help you live out your fantasy of not sticking to ethics in BFSI by watching heist films?
Arvind: Certainly, that's not an option at all, but interesting thought.
Anushka: Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for giving us your time today and giving us a lot of, I was going to say insider information. I'm going to start that again. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for giving us time from your busy schedule today and sharing so many insights with us. It was great talking to you.
Arvind: My pleasure. Thank you.
Anushka: And thank you for listening to this episode of Wiser Voices. We'll catch you in the next episode with a new career space so you can grow WiZR every day.
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Anushka: This podcast is a production of WiZR. I'm your host, Anushka Chhikara. Achyutanand Dwivedi is the head of audio and video production. And our executive producer is Loveleen Sehrawat. For more information on how you can grow your career with WiZR, visit WiZR dot in. The link is in the show notes. And thank you for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode!
