Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Overcoming Failure and Following your Passion: Graduate Advice from Head of Trading and Banking Solutions at LSEG Dean Berry
Dean Berry, Group Head of Trading and Banking Solutions at the London Stock Exchange Group joins to discuss; career reflections in Trading, Broking and Fintech as well as advice on the importance of resilience, following your passion and how students can take advantage of opportunities in financial markets.
Dean's pursuit to learn and enthusiasm in the face of challenges along his journey, created opportunities to work across leading finance market institutions such as ANZ, Deutsche Bank, ICAP, BGC as well as the London Stock Exchange Group (Refinitiv). Transitioning from 16 years as a derivatives trader to electronic trading in Broking and finally Head of Trading and Banking Solutions, Dean's incredible career and insightful lessons are essential for all individuals looking to make an impact in their career.
For more episodes like this please visit www.workinfintech.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
Check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list to hear more about opportunities in fintech and web3.
Follow our socials Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube
https://workinfintech.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/work-in-fintech-global
https://www.twitter.com/workinfintech
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdS4bYoCXaHVgfVm6syUrDw
Matthew Cheung 0:04
Hi, this is Matt. I'm founder of Work in FinTech. And today I'm joined by Dean Berry, who's Global Head of Trading and Banking Solutions at LSEG. And today we're going to talk about all things FinTech also joined by Amrit Khatkar, who is a Master student of computer science at Birmingham University. Hi, Dean. Thanks for joining us and Amrit, should we kick off?
Amrit Khatkar 0:26
Sure. So before we get into some of the questions, I think it'd be great to get a bit of an introduction about yourself a bit about your journey, how you got to where you are now and type of work that you're doing now as well.
Dean Berry 0:37
Yeah, sure. Well, first, guys, you know, thanks for having me. You know, it's a pleasure to kind of be able to share my story. So so that's great. I think probably it's best maybe if I start off just by going back, I'm unfortunately old enough to to remember a time when FinTech wasn't a thing. So there was, you know, there was there was no term for FinTech, when I started, but I guess, you know, stepping back from that I, I've kind of always seen what I would call kind of, you know, equities trading or, you know, kind of stock broking, you know, these are the things these are the terms that were kind of thrown around when I was growing up. And that was that was kind of, I knew I wanted to do that. Even though I didn't know what that was. I just knew I wanted to do that. I think there's parallels with today's world where people want to be in FinTech, but they don't, they don't really know what that is. And I think first of all, I would say, that's absolutely fine. So, like I am where I am, and I didn't know what that was, I just had a passion for wanting to do to do that type of thing. So I would say to people, not certainly not to be too hard on themselves, if they don't understand or they don't feel like they understand every component of FinTech. So that's, that's important. Whether you start you know, I certainly didn't go to the right school. And, you know, I definitely didn't come from an environment where I knew a host of people in the city, I knew no one I went to, in fact, I went to the school that had the reputation as coming bottom in the league tables, when they first published league tables, my school came bottom, which was actually pretty good, because, you know, we got huge grants, and the school was, was tremendous after that. But I think, you know, there's, there was a passion that I had for, for what I saw as kind of stock broking, and just just financial markets, and the kind of the noise and the buzz of of trading. So I knew I wanted to be a trader, I had a skill for math. So I guess, you know, I was pretty keen to kind of get rid of every other subject that I could, as quick as I could, and get down to kind of just pushing the maths piece. So I went from, you know, the usual approach, I actually went to Birmingham University myself, and, you know, that was should have been, should have been the perfect thing, great Red Brick University. Unfortunately, I kind of, you know, I didn't have great advice from my school, so I ended up directing myself into a pure maths degree, which was exactly not what I wanted to do. You know, I didn't want to be writing theorems and I actually wanted to be doing something much more applied, was able to kind of change out of that and kind of changed in a much more of a vocational degree. So again, I would say to people, this is, you know, when you hit hurdles like that, right, that it's how you deal with these things. So, you know, you come into something that was the dream, I got University, first person, first person in my family to get University, and all of a sudden, two terms in, like, I hate it, I hate, I hate what I'm doing, I hate the lack of applied, you have two choices. And either you kind of quit, or you look at this as an opportunity to be able to say, well, actually, I've got here, I've learned something, what can I do with this, and for me, it was a case of I was able to leverage where I got to, to get onto another court and changed into something much more applied. So still maths, but much more applied with statistics as it was then. So I did that. And that was great. I kind of was in a world where I felt that I was, you know, kind of much more able to express what I wanted to do. So I did a lot more kind of practical stuff, modelling of, you know, financial markets and the like, and did the usual kind of end of graduate Milkround, as it was a called then applied to, you know, hosted banks, the usual problem, you know, you don't necessarily get into what you want. But I think at the moment, it's about, it's hard to know exactly what you do want. So I would encourage people, again, to apply for a whole range of things within within this FinTech environment, you know, whether it be banks, whether it be startups, whether it be high frequency trading firms, you know, depending on what you're interested in, apply to a lot because you actually, you still don't know until you kind of get a bit closer to that. And I guess I was pretty lucky that maths was a was a well sought after degree. I went straight into what was called financial engineering at the time, which I guess you would probably kind of call like Quant trading. Now, it was, you know, this was kind of what we did. We wrote the models and traded, but you know, very much model driven. And it was only really then that I kind of got an idea of what actually we were doing and, and where were my interest leads. So that was kind of my journey then. I guess the things I want to people to takeaways, there were lots of bumps, lots of bumps, you know, I didn't have the perfect grades, I got a first class degree, but it's how you get there, right? So, so don't be put off by by where you come from, what school you went to, you know, when I look at people today is a huge amount about their background that, that really interests me. So being successful in today's in today's FinTech world, or, or just in general, I think it's about resilience, more than anything. So resilience, and having a passion for what you do. I've seen so many traders over the years, who have kind of entered this because, you know, either the financial rewards have lured them in , and actually, this is the last thing they want, they spend all their time dreaming about opening a bakery, right, or doing things which actually they feel passionate about. But it doesn't pay the bills. And I think that's, that's fool's gold, right, you're chasing something which, which doesn't, really doesn't really bring you so get passionate about, you know, what you enjoy, and actually go for that. And I think that resilience and that relentlessness around what you enjoy, will, will bear fruit. And certainly in my case, that's, that's been the case. just fast forward in where we are, you know, I kind of I spent 16 years as a derivatives trader, and running trading teams, which was fantastic, really different periods, huge explosion of markets from kind of 95 to the say, 07, and then a very different set of market, you know, kind of through the crisis that was, I guess, different, let's, let's call it that. And I was kind of lucky to go from a trader, but because of my background, I was very much, I was very much, I guess, close to electronic trading, which, which led me into, you know, down down that path, and I have some, I did some coding, as, you know, as part of my degree, but I am definitely not a coder, you know, that's this is, there's a misconception that, that everyone needs to be a coder. And that, again, is simply not true. So there are a host of different roles within, within FinTech. And, you know, having, I would say having some skills is, is really beneficial. And if you are that way inclined, that I think, you know, you should really push on that. But there are a lot of roles, you know, whether it's within product or whether it's within sales, whether it's, you know, whether it's actually within, you know, kind of the strategy side of what you're doing, which don't require, we still require that level of, of coding. So I moved on from from trading and kind of the next obvious step for me was kind of fully electronic trading. So I spent about 10 years working at the two big global brokers, ICAP my BGC Partners running their electronic franchises completely different to what I was used to as a trader, but actually that kind of dynamic the customers obviously with the same I guess, there was an element of poacher turned gamekeeper. You know, I've been a customer for a long time, I felt a lot of pain points, and felt, you know, kind of, I knew what people were certainly I thought, you know, I knew what people people wanted. We've got a lot of platforms learn a huge amount in a really hard to electronify things, you know, I started I would probably say, outside of FX, which has been going you know, for some time, you know, there was almost zero electronification in fixed income. So that's been like a real journey which you know, having spent 10 years doing that I'm you know, delighted at the amount of business we've electronified and then yeah, I've been at our sag now for around five months and yeah, this is this is I guess the you know, the kind of certainly the most interesting role that I've that I've had. Where did you start off I did you did you start off in in one of the one of the bigger firms
Unknown Speaker 9:14
No, no, no, I am talking is similar to you where you said like you wanted to be a stockbroker and yeah, that's I had the same thing. And I actually did this is why I mentor my old school, because I did my work experience like a local stockbrokers in Worthing in West Sussex, just kind of outside of Brighton. And I did my weeks work experience when I was like 15-16. And then after that, every single time there was a holiday or a half term, whatever I used to go back in again, and then I kept on doing that all the way up to uni. I went to CASS and I did investment and risk management and that was kind of geared up to going into trading and stuff. And then I contacted the kind of group of guys that I'd worked at that they're stockbrokers as I'm looking for a job if you got any contact Same thing I didn't know anyone. So I was looking for some contacts from these guys. And you write the letters out to a bunch of people. And then I ended up, didn't get anything from that and then I decided to go travelling around Africa. I went backpacking for three, four months. And the day I was leaving, this guy called me up because I had a coffee with him like couple of months ago, he said, I've got a job for you now. And I'm looking for a risk analyst for our portfolio managers. Brilliant, I said, I'm just about to go to Africa for four months, so and he goes, oh, it's fine, we'll leave, we'll leave the job here. We'll sort it all out while you're away. And then when you come back to a job to go to, and that was kind of where I started so that was RBC and I did that for two years. But then I wanted to get into trading. So I started looking for jobs. And then and then I think 911 happened, there were no jobs around, kind of all dried up. And then I went to, I did, I did a Master's at Imperial, because I thought, well, if there's no jobs around, it's a good time to probably get tooled up. And then when I came out, I was actually unemployed for nine months, I was on the dole, I actually got to the point where I was on the dose, I couldn't find a job. And I was very depressing. and ended up going into futures trading, like prop futures trading, where you were kind of, you know, every every little pound that you may trading, we use kind of paying the bills and so on. And that was, that was a hard environment. And I was the I was trading like, index futures and bubble schats, all of that. And that was, again, that was kind of back in the day when it was, you know, I suppose easier than it than it is now. But then I moved out from trading then onto the analyst side, and I set up a company called Ransquawk. And we basically were doing real time analysis. And it was a Squawk Box so we ended up growing it from this was 2005. It went from two people grew it, so like 25 people. And we had kind of Prop traders, hedge funds, banks, all of that type of intraday trading community, we're subscribers to the service. And we add 20 guys sitting in front of 60 screens, you know, a bunch of screens, this side bunch of screens behind, got a microphone and just shout it out. When news coming out, you know, Trichet comes out and says something and the bund moves, you know, 100 ticks it was all that type of stuff. Yeah, and I did that for, like, 12 years, until until we did iPushPull.
Unknown Speaker 12:32
Interesting. Again, this, this goes to show the journey. You know, it's it definitely isn't a straight line, right, it isn't a straight line. And sometimes, I've met a few people locally in Wales, I'm kind of passionate about trying to help people in Wales as well, because it's hard, right? It's hard for, you know, it was a real benefit for me, you know, I was literally, you know, the only Welsh trader in the market at the time, which was great for me, because people kind of knew me, right? If this I'll be about that Welsh guy was kind of me so. But what I realised is actually, for me, that was, that was, that was a great way for people to get to know, get to know me, you know, I was able to kind of, you know, build a network quite quickly. And no matter what people said, That's important, right? You have to build a network, it's kind of it's, that's, you know, you learn much more about from building a network than you do from, you know, from any set of, you know, kind of courses you can go on, but I think it's not, I say, I said this to someone else today, it's not about the sometimes it's not about the actual network. It's about the grind that you have to put yourself through to be able to actually, to get in front of these people. And it again, it builds resilience, right? You kind of, you know, if you get into a habit of, of kind of not necessarily, just cold calling, but kind of getting into a habit of kind of trying to grow. And there was no LinkedIn either, right? When I look at it now, I'm like, wow, I would have been great.
Unknown Speaker 13:55
You mentioned a lot of really interesting things there. And obviously, you transition from trading to broking to FinTech, which are three very different job roles, what types of skills did you learn and develop in order to make sure that you were successful in all three of them?
Unknown Speaker 14:08
So I think it's worth kind of, I actually, I've never seen that that my job has changed that much if I'm honest. Right, so the titles change, kind of yes, I was a, I was a trader than I was and that was what I did almost like a self employed trader, you know, I focused on my p&l. And then I kind of my role changed, I became a manager of traders, right. So your role changes and the skill set, you start you need to build, you know, kind of changes that evolves into E-trading. So even I worked for, you know, in the big global broking firms in essence I was running E-trading solutions if you like for them. So yes, it changed but I think there's a common theme and again now I'm you know, I'm I'm globally responsible for the trading and banking so the theme is still there whereby I've kept this kind of this heart of centred around trading? Well, what what, what I would say around going from just the analytical trading side into into the more FinTech side, now, I'd never built product before, right? That was something which was, which was a real journey for me. So I built pricing models, and I kind of inadvertently had built product. You know, I was the guy who wrote and built kind of our pricing systems, our p&l and risk systems, and I actually tried to make those in Excel look as, as you know, like a product. So I think, without realising it, I started that journey. But you know, what, you building good product, I never really had gone through that kind of client feedback loop because I was declined. And I was building my own product. So I think I stumbled my way in and I would kind of say that people that is it, there's a real skill to building product. So I would encourage people genuinely to do kind of product type courses, right? Because there are some skills which adjust, which you actually can learn. So there's a lot of things that you actually can't learn from from a course. But you know, product, you know, being a product manager, I think is worth doing is worth doing, you know a qualification. You know, there's some fundamentals that you that you kind of learn some of the things that they don't teach you, though, is it hard to build good product. So, you know, to me, building good products starts and ends with the client. So the feedback loops that you know, that you build, I see far too often people building product in a vacuum. So either they believe they know best, or, you know, they're in a funding conundrum whereby they've suddenly got this funding. And the last thing they want to do is ask a client and then suddenly not spend the money because they heard something they didn't like, and I think that actually leads you to, to build a pretty poor product. So I think early engagement clients, you know, this comes back to the networking piece, if you're constantly engaging with clients, you're able to bring them on the journey, you're able to, you're able to genuinely get their feedback, you've got to learn, you can't listen to everything every client says otherwise, you're actually not building anything. And you know, you would be constantly in a loop. But that, that real feedback loop where you're getting, you know, criticism, and hopefully constructive criticism, I would say, but, you know, you're kind of able to get that and build that into your product. That's something which comes with experience. So I definitely learned that I think the other things that along the journey, prioritisation. So, in any good FinTech, if you start if you're going to start up, be focused. So, you know, I think one of the biggest things that I have to do today is say no, so, you know, we could, there are a million good things that I hear. But understanding what you can do, understanding what you want to do, and understanding, strategically, the things that that you should do are really important. So saying no, to a lot of things is what I seem to spend a lot of my day doing. I think the final thing is, you know, understanding how do you build velocity and momentum in in business, I think this is apply to fintechs, it certainly applies to my, you know, my current role, I've always believed in kind of focusing on on the things which really make a difference in this I got from trading. So when you when you learn to trade, you learn to basically assess risk, and to basically place your bets on a risk weighted outcome. So it's not about placing the same amount of money each time, you know, you basically you can be a 51-49 trader, but as long as you bet properly, then you're going to make a lot of money. And that's been kind of drilled into me for for so many years. So what I think that means now in this world is trying to do 50 things, you will, you will, you will do 50 things at the edge, you know, I talked to my guys about about focusing on the big rocks. There's a great book by James Kirk called legacy about the New Zealand All Blacks. And I'd encourage everyone to read that whether you're into sport or not, you don't need to be this is a life book about kind of, really, folks in the All Blacks have, you know, arguably been the best at what they do for so long and they focus on very simple things, they focus on the things which will actually really make a difference. And if you try and make too many of those, you can't really focus on it, there's just not enough time. So I keep banging on the people about let's make sure we move the big rocks, we might pick up some small ones on the way. But let's have three big rocks, that no matter what happens this year, we are going to move on, we're going to move them far up the field. If you do that, you know, 25 years in that that's worked tremendously well for me that, you know, I've been able to actually generate significant revenues by really focusing on the big things there. Sometimes you pick the wrong big thing, you know, so I think you've also got to be humble enough, and that goes back to the client feedback piece. Sometimes people get so wedded to an idea that they struggle to be able to actually see the wood from the trees and sometimes you know, there's a great saying in trading, the first cut is the cheapest. So you know, sometimes you're better off just, you know, cutting if you really realise that you are wrong, you know, but sometimes you only learn that
Unknown Speaker 20:11
And so on that piece you mentioned, identifying the big rocks and moving the big pieces. There are a huge amount of opportunities, technological opportunities at the minute, whether that's AI, automation, big data, the cloud has a huge amount of opportunities. And they're all impacting in different ways of FinTech, whether that's payments, or trade lifecycle processing, and that type of thing, what technology do you see as the dominating technology in the in the next few years ahead? And how does that link into your primary business area, so trading in global analytics?
Unknown Speaker 20:41
So again, this is I think, very specific in terms of what I do. So rather than just throwing the buzzwords, the actual real output of AI, and ML, I think, is probably one of the most is the biggest things. You know, in my world, there's a big opportunity around kind of collaborative trading. And I think that the processing power that we have today, and the tools we have, can make really big, big shifts there. The other one, I would say, and this is this is really not sexy, but it continues to drive my world is actually true automation. And I put the word true in front of because sometimes people use the word automation, but actually, they're not really automating things, they just stitching processes together. And I think true automation, whereby you can have genuinely no hands. Again, I still think something which which drives, certainly the trading, the trading and the banking world, you know, we're doing a lot of things which, which are really around productivity in our banking suite. Because you know, if you're an investment banker, you still, you still spend a huge amount of your life using using Microsoft Office type tools. And you need automated productivity. You don't want to be producing pitch decks, which again, are constantly having to be done again and again. And so you know, we're doing a lot of automation of of those sometimes mundane tasks, which make a significant difference. You think about M&A, M&A seems like you know, the big, you know, the big, you know, you've closed a huge deal for, but there's a huge amount of grind that goes into the background, no huge, huge amount of people who are kind of turning cogs behind the scenes, you know, so we're, you know, we've got a, we've got a big focus on that, because that's, that's an industry which hasn't really changed for probably the last 20 years. So I would say, AI and ml, and then automation, definitely, in my world,
Unknown Speaker 22:29
On the electronification piece can you can you just elaborate on what that is? For people who are who are students and graduates who obviously know financial markets in our world they'll they'll know of exchange traded markets, the electronification piece, can you can you talk about what that means, and what it applies to?
Unknown Speaker 22:47
Yeah, sure, so, so, pretty much my entire life I've spent working in the, what they call the OTC over the counter markets, and those, and those markets have been traditionally kind of voice dominated. So you know, so you would, you would use a broker, that would be you would request a price over a phone, not even on a chat, just, you know, over a standard phone line. And, you know, those markets were very, very, you know, high touch you needed, you needed to speak to a person who then use the network effect of shouting around, and those 10 people spoke to 10 people each, and suddenly, you had 100, people's view of where that price was the electronification of markets basically has removed different layers. However, one thing which which people don't really understand this, this is definitely not a black or white. So this is not a, someone picks up a phone, or someone goes to completely no touch, and just uses basically an API, you know, with an algo wheel to send orders there are 50 Shades of Grey there, right. So, you know, we call our middle bit hybrid, and hybrid is where predominantly most of the trading is still taking place. So outside of things like, you know, spot FX and equities, the majority of the world is still trading in some type of hybrid way. And what does that mean? That means they will be using electronic systems to execute. They, you know, there's still a lot of manual traders, who are, you know, using a keyboard to enter into an order into an electronic system, and then the, you know, the automation takes over and the rest of the workflow is electronic, right, but it's still a human quite often entering that order. Or it could be, you know, a human is written an algo and is actually using that to send an order in, but what you will, you will find in a lot of places, is there will still be some sort of touch point with someone to manage that, you know, you're not able to clear that risk. So there's, there's a huge, you know, having worked for the big brokers as there's a huge part of the brokers play in that ecosystem. You know, people still need to speak to people they still need a nuance of understanding emotion and you know, when someone, when you ask, you know what happened in the market, you can get as many signals as you want. But the, you know, the real gold is what gets spoken into the air, and you hear that sentiment, which, which is actually driving behaviour. So, so yeah, so that kind of hopefully explains, you know, when you get to the full end of electronification, that necessary that is no touch, you know, basically, that is a human deciding on how he wants his algo to work, and then literally taking his hands off and just tweaking, tweaking the algo to drive and the whole decision making is done by machine, right through the pricing, the trading, the settlement all the way back through to risk. And, you know, there's there's no human touch there. But that is people shouldn't be people shouldn't be misinformed, that that is what happens everywhere. That is not what happens everywhere, I would say hybrid is still the kind of biggest the biggest way that people trade.
Unknown Speaker 25:57
So you mentioned that in a world where automation is the primary form of contacting markets, and that is the way that traders execute trades, if you like, for people who are graduates now and a few years, when they may be that that may be the environment that they're working in, what will the job description look like? Will it be more of a product management type role, where that sort of creating miniature products, if you like, and using those, or is it more analytical?
Unknown Speaker 26:21
I often joke with a lot of the product people, you know, I think I think product is a new trading. And, you know, there's a host of, of ex traders who now work in product. So, you know, I'm proud to say that, you know, I run product, that that's what I do, right? So again, depending on on what you're doing so in my in my world, then then product tends to be does tend to be a little bit more technical, you know, given what I'm involved in. So, you know, the skill sets that that we are really keen on, do tend to involve things like Python, and the like. But again, I want to reassure people that, that there are many different themes. So you know, we're talking, you're talking to someone who was very involved in, in, you know, trading solutions, and that still has a big element of kind of coding and the like. So I would encourage people, definitely, if you are that way inclined, or even if you're not that way inclined, have a basic understanding of Python, it actually, it genuinely isn't hard, you know a basic understanding, you don't need to be able to write huge Python scripts, but just to be able to understand that there's a wealth of free online courses, which will just explain to you just, you know, the basic syntax that that is Python, and basically, you know, there's quite a few courses you can do, you know, where you kind of drag and drop shapes to build Python language, it actually isn't that hard. So I think, you know, I would encourage people to have an understanding, increasingly, all of the the traders that that we deal with, especially the graduates are coming in, I'd say they all have some form of kind of Python skills, I don't think that can be ignored, I would definitely say, an understanding of the cloud environment, again, you don't have to be, you know, a kind of data scientists, you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to understand the ins and outs of how AWS works. But you can go and do like a basic AWS certification, which will just make it clear to you what AWS is about what those services offer, you know, how they work, what are the benefits of, you know, having cloud services and I would encourage people, you know, these these are types of things, which I think a differentiate this for people when you go, you know, when you when you go through the kind of graduate programmes, everyone I would say, it's like, by the time you've got to me, you're already smart enough, I don't need to ask you how smart you are, like, these people are really smart. We stand a lockdown for things which which stand out at the moment. Those are, you know, the things I've said Python, AWS, but also then some sort of background, which demonstrates to me that actually, there's an element of passion and kind of entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial spirit. I think that's, you know, an often like, hugely undervalued thing, and I would I always look for that I'm, you know, I'm looking for people who, who basically want to get up every day, and they want to win. When you trade. That's the great thing kind of the day closes, your p&l closes, you wake up the next morning, you know, you might be sitting at a loss, but nonetheless, you wake up at zero. And at the end of the day, you're at 100. So you look at it and go, that was a good day. Right? You kind of you get a daily metric, which teaches you about winning every day. And I think, even if you're not trading, that's something which, you know, daily, at the end of every day, I write down kind of, you know, the things that I that I feel have worked really well and what I need to carry forward for the next day. And to me that's almost like my p&l. That's not my daily p&l. And I've done that for so many years that it's just become like a habit which which I won't finish until I've actually done that. So I know tomorrow, when I walk in, this is the first thing I'm going to attack, you know, so people who can show some, some entrepreneurial skills, and are able to demonstrate that they've, they've had also setbacks in their life. Because, you know, going through the perfect curve of getting to a Graduate Job, that's not really interesting to me, because I can guarantee you that that is not what it's like, when you get when you get to the real world. You know, Matt and I were talking earlier around, you know, it's difficult you have bumps, people would look at my career and say, oh, that feels like you've you know, you've gone on, you know, every single time has been perfect. Definitely not, you know, setbacks in, in areas, you know, whereby, you know, I genuinely thought I understood markets, so well, you know, I've got huge promotion to go and run trading in Tokyo, I land in Tokyo, you know, I don't know anything about Japan, can speak Japanese never eaten sushi, you know, thank God for subway. And within six weeks, the whole Japanese crisis happened. So I felt my life was over, you know, I did my big break, and then suddenly gone. And then I kind of come home with my tail between my legs, because there was no trading to do there was no, you couldn't trade yen in 1998, it was a market where you know, we're really dislocated. So, you know, you then have two choices, I then had to kind of swallow my pride, going back to what I felt was a lower job than the one I started with, because obviously, someone would fill that job, and you go again, but that kind of that that led me on to an emerging market prop desk, never done that before. And, you know, I learned a huge amount about things I would never have seen if I hadn't have if I hadn't done that. So, you know, it's, it isn't a straight line, it isn't a straight line, there's a definite, I see it with my own kids, there's a fear of failure. And, you know, frankly, you know, there's a great, I'm definitely going to steal the highperformance podcast, there's that's a great podcast, right? They talk around failure should be followed with a comma, right? It's not a full stop. So things that go wrong. Like anyone who says that they don't go wrong, I guarantee you, they won't end up anywhere. So the only way that you end up kind of moving forward and being successful, is by failing and things going wrong. Otherwise, you can't be good enough. If you're not challenged by that failure, you're never going, you know, it would be like playing in a football team and no one ever scoring against you are never losing any games, it just doesn't happen. It's like this Instagram life of working, which you know, everything's perfect. It isn't that way. So even if people start off in an area where they may feel is, you know, I was speaking to someone earlier on about, you know, they started life in risk. And that wasn't where they wanted to start. They wanted to be a trader, but they started in risk. However, what they learned in risk, is given them a fantastic career, and they actually know run like an equities business for me, that tells you, you know, something, you know, very kind of interesting about, it's not really where you start, it's very much around what you do with that. So seems a little boring. I know to say that it's not it's, you know, it's all about all about the journey, but but it actually is,
Unknown Speaker 33:11
In terms of FinTech itself as a both in terms of capital markets, while but more broadly, we were talking earlier about how you know, you and I are in FinTech, and it's a rapidly growing area. There's, there's high demand for it. There's lots of jobs as there's an abundance of opportunities. For people who don't understand FinTech and kind of looking in. They don't see that opportunity there that we can see. What would you say to people who are currently studying or looking at the jobs market, about FinTech and how important it is as we're going forward? Because I always say to people that all things are FinTech, really, in this, there's so many touch points in so many different areas. What would you say to people looking at this as a career option?
Unknown Speaker 34:02
So I would I would agree with with your statement, I think, personally, I definitely would be as open as I could be across the board. So you know, don't get pigeonholed too early. I think, you know, one of the things that, you know, I was very lucky, I started life working for ANZ, I actually had offers from from bigger banks. But as I said, you know, where the firm that really, I felt really wanted me. And, you know, that allowed me to basically have exposure to a huge amount of things. In FinTech, I would say, you know, try and try and get involved in as many different parts of it. There are, you know, well, I actually don't like the word FinTech. If I'm being honest, I don't like it because I think it pigeonholes people into thinking it's a thing. And it isn't a thing. It's just a wrapper for a host of things. You know, if you're interested in marketstech, you know, or reg tech, or there's lots of things which I will I would encourage people to really, you know, to try as they're going through their journey to apply for as many different things as they can, when you're doing internships, try and try and get onto different programmes. Because frankly, you don't know what you don't know. And when, unfortunately, when you're in university, that is, my, I'm pretty sure this is the case, when I speak to the grads. Now, careers advice is still not there, in, in financial markets, because it's a relatively close group. So unless, you know, there is the occasional kind of ex trader who ends up going to become a lecturer and who really does understand, but that's the exception, not the rule. So I would say be as broad as you can, within the field that interests you, I would say that, you know, I think it's good early in your career to kind of, to try to change roles quite frequently, that may well be a little bit kind of counterintuitive, but I, I actually think, you know, as a trader, every two or three years, you kind of you've changed that was sometimes partly because of the way the contracts works. But also, you know, it was opportunity, and it was, there was chances to kind of try, and I know, that made me more marketable, it also kind of opened my mind. So, you know, I've seen a huge range of the role I have today I have, because I've got a broad understanding of many different asset classes, I would never have got that if I'd have just stayed working at one bank, doing what I did. So I would say, be broad, I would try and get as much experience or apply for as much as you can, early on, you have plenty of time to get domain experience, don't get me wrong, there is a big value in domain experience, at some point, you know, you need to know more than, than, than the next person. But I think getting to that point is, is is almost as important as kind of the domain experience what you learn getting to that point, range you so that you actually can find something you're passionate about as well, that's, you know, I said that earlier, that's, I think, 80% of, you know, kind of 80% of what you're doing, if you are passionate, you know, you are a long time working, the alarm goes off really early for me and the day that I don't want to get out of it, I can probably think of literally a handful of times that I'm not wanting to go to bed, you know, and, you know, that's because I'm kind of passionate about what I do I enjoy what I do. And and that's easy to say. And people might say, Well, you know, you've you've you've had a career, and you've been successful. Yeah, but I only had that because I think I was passionate about and more determined than then, you know, the person next to me who I think was less passionate about about what they did.
Unknown Speaker 37:39
And if we just finish off on as well can, can you just talk through how you're, you're in a very senior role, probably one of the largest fintechs in in the world? Can you just talk about how it doesn't actually matter what school you went to what university you went to what colour you are, what your background is, and I just talked about those, those perceived barriers are not actually there and just see it needs people need to kind of be proactive and make that move and it's easier than you think. Could you just talk about that just to finish off?
Unknown Speaker 38:16
Sure. So, and this is really important, and really important to me, actually, as well. So I think they The good news is that, you know, firms diversity policies, and that have never been stronger. And I think if a firm, if a firm doesn't have one of those, or if it's kind of like a little bit of an embarrassment to talk about, don't go and work there, right, because basically, the culture is bad. And, you know, I'm very proud to work at LSEG Refinitiv, because they have a huge kind of passion about, you know, the kind of different cultures, diversity inclusivity. And I think I think that's really important, firstly, but that's good for people because there is a real awareness of really, actually, unless you think about it, then naturally, you're not actively kind of moving this forward, okay to say, say I'm very diverse in my thinking, but you've actually got to be proactive, to be diverse. So I think I think that's times have changed dramatically from when it was, you know, a male dominated kind of environment. Secondly, I think you're dealt the cards, you're dealt, right. So, you know, if you're at a private school, then that's, that's okay. That's, that's not a bad thing. But if you're at a state school, it's amazing what you can do with that, you know, as I said, earlier, I went to I went to something which looked like a really poor school actually did amazingly well for me, you know, I had that passion, I wanted to succeed. I did succeed, genuinely, I would, I would say to people, it is there has never been a better time whereby people are being encouraged to look at diverse backgrounds, being encouraged to look through just a standard CV, which, which kind of, you know, ticks boxes along the way. I would say try and pick your course carefully. If it's not the right course, don't be afraid to change and if that means changing University, you know, I went from Red Brick university to a new university, the best thing I ever did, I would have probably, I would have passed, I'm sure if I stayed, you know, at Birmingham, because I just would have, but I'd hated it. And I would have come out with something that that actually wouldn't have been practical. Whereas actually, I loved the degree I did. I came out with a first, you know, I kind of I came out feeling that, you know, I think I'm, you know, I've learned so much more that is applied. So don't be afraid to kind of pivot if you need to pivot, rather than just hanging on because someone says to you, oh, well, you know, this is a good university, I think, you know, people are far more interested. Final thing I'd say is, you know, there's, there's a lot of testing, which really pulls out people's skills now. And I would, that's, that's something which, which I think is actually I think, is helpful for people. So, you know, the whole personality test that's moved on massively from what it used to be 10 years ago, I took real opportunity actually, to express yourself. And to get across, you know, we're looking for people who are, who are slightly different, I'm not looking for a robot who basically fits an exact box, I love to see, you know, the scatter charts when they show me the personality, you know, so we're looking for certain traits, you know, if you're in sales, clearly, you want people who are dynamic, if you're in trading on people who are analytical, you were looking for certain traits, but you're also looking for these other softer traits, which demonstrate, you know, that they actually really can work really well in a team that they can actually stand up for what they believe in, you know, these things, these things are also important. So, yeah, you know, I definitely did not come through, you know, the classic path. And I think it's much easier now to get, you know, to get a position compared to when Matt You and I were, we were trying, we're trying to get started. So, yeah, you know, believe in yourself, which a lot of people feel my own my own son, you know, feels already the pressure, you know, he's only doing this GCSEs and he already feels the pressure of what if I don't get this then, you know, when I want to get to a levels I wouldn't have had as you know, as many nines as I'm not in it doesn't matter, because that would be little people who are getting, you know, straight A's, but it really isn't everything. And that's the great thing about about FinTech, you can have huge FinTech like when I work and I'd say, and I said, that's a huge multinational firm, or you can have startups with with three people. So there is an opportunity to get in at different levels. And yeah, I would say just be focused on what you want to do and network and meditate. That would be my other bit of advice.