Higher earner, late starter

[Turefu]

There’s thread about how to become higher earner in finance. Lots of answers says join graduate program. My situation is different. I’m in my mid-forties , I’ve done degree in economics in my home country twenty years ago, but never used it. I moved to UK soon after and had few low paid jobs, stayed there for many reasons. I join large bank five years ago, branch, call
centre and now treasury. But wage is very low, just above minimum wage. I’m frustrated with it. I’m studying for AAT level 3 now. How I get into better paid jobs? I’m applying , I’m getting interviews, but not further. Recently I saw job advert as assistant accountant , minimum AAT4 , three years experience , salary 20-25k. Am I being unrealistic it’s low? I want to develop my career, graduate programs are not an option for me.

Can you code? Finance is a data-driven area so having some data science skills and being able to code in maybe Python would be advantageous.

I’d still recommend graduate schemes or training schemes if they’re open to people who graduated a while ago. Most accept career changers as par for the course.

Hi @HelicopterHeights no, I can’t code, but I started online course recently. @Chickenly I didn’t know graduate programs are open for all graduates, I’ll try. Thank you.

My son started as on a graduate training scheme straight out of university with another graduate who is 30 and has more interesting work as he’s more experienced. They are working in the NE on a base salary over £30k. The company allows flexible work hours and although it’s not very exciting being in a convivial space must be worth quite a bit.

Yes you can apply for graduate roles. I experienced the occasional person 30+ joining alongside a bunch of 21-25 year olds

I think you need proper career advice. Brilliant that you are doing more training as a never-used degree from 20 years ago will be of questionable value to employers.

The good news is that there is a general short supply of workers at the moment so be ambitious, apply for jobs even if you think you don't match all of the essential criteria. My team advertised 4 jobs recently (paying £40k plus) and got a total of 8 applicants across all of them.

Well, I’m in my mid-forties 🙂 Working with people half my age doesn’t bother me, but it may bother my potential employer. There’s an apprentice offer at my bank, exactly what I want to do, I applied for the same role two years ago, but they rejected me. I just want to be realistic. I just can’t imagine work another 25 years on small wage.

Unless you are prepared to go on to do your ACCA/ACA/CIMA then I don't think the accountancy sector pays well anymore. So many jobs around me are in the £20-£25k range for part qualified, which is what I was earning 15 years ago in the same sector/same level. Wages aren't rising. At entry level I worked with an 18 year old recently who was earning £2.5k LESS than what I was earning at the same age/qualifications 20 years ago. If you want to be earning good money be prepared to do the study or change vocation would be my advice.

@HappyKoala56 I am prepared to complete ACCA or similar, just need a job which allow me to do it. Passing exams is a one thing, getting an experience quite another. I want to have a job, which allows me to do it. I’m open on other options, including changing vocation, but on what exactly and I would need to start trading from scratch anyway and I don’t feel I’ve got time left to do it.

There are plenty of relatively junior roles for part qualified accountants in insurance in the London market, typically starting around the 40k range. However, unless you’re going down the ACA route or similar there probably isn’t that much progression in it and you are likely to get stuck in backwaters like credit control. Insurance is good if you’re not as tech savvy, as it is still a fairly technologically underdeveloped sector, albeit that is slowly changing.

Hi,
You need experience in an area that is always going to be needed, I.e. not automated, and where the skills are specialised so people can’t be quickly trained. You mention treasury - what do you do there? If it’s anything related to reconciliations, then try to swap to another role (will be automated). Treasury is a decent place to work if you’re closer to the action part of forward modelling or trading.
Other hot areas - Know Your Client/Client onboarding, financial crime, certain areas of compliance, operational risk, credit risk, market risk.
Avoid Operations (again, will be automated in due course so salaries are suppressed).
If you’re in a retail bank, try swapping to an investment bank. Salaries are higher but so are the hours and stress.

I started training to be an accountant in my 30s - doing the exams through an apprenticeship so I get paid a salary and my training is paid for too. It might be worth looking for something like that? The other trainees are 10-15 years younger than me but it doesn't seem to have mattered so far. It is hard doing the exams with children and the starting salary is low but you will have good job prospects once qualified.

I trained with a Big 4 accountancy firm more than a decade ago. Even then the age range in my office intake was 18-38) so yes, consider graduate schemes. Although do read the fine print…we had to be available to travel and were fired if we failed exams…

Join a women’s mentoring scheme that includes a focus on sponsorship- i.e. where your mentor will not just guide you, but actually open doors for you.

The schemes are often sector focussed. A quick Google returns Women in Banking and Finance mentoring programme.

You have five years of experience, which is amazing! You mention that you work for a large bank - in my experience it is difficult to move up in larger companies. Why not have a look at competitors who may also have apprenticeships? Also, speak to recruitment and ask for the detailed feedback from your rejected application.

I don't have any banking qualifications and I'm on about £53K without overtime. I joined a bank as a temp on a near minimum wage in November 2017 and worked my way up quickly. I was early 30s when I started.

I would honestly focus on literacy. How you write, communicate verbally etc is a big factor.

The main thing that helped me was doing a lot of overtime, always asking to learn new tasks, going for every change in team or department offered and changing contracts once or twice a year.

I have broad experience across investment, retail banking and mortgages, so I can always do a contract somewhere. I started in admin / call handling but learnt the theory quickly and always made process suggestions.

I was contacted about a £65K role last week. Every time you reach a new salary someone will offer more.

Hi @January17 thank you for sharing. What were your steps? I joined on part-time hours, but asked for full time later on and they accepted.

Nov 2017 - reconciliation admin
Jan 2018 - mortgage calls
May 2018 - investment firm
October 2018 - other investment firm
July 2019 - PPI
September 2020 - investment work
May 2021 - retail and business banking
March 2022 - retail and business banking

I also entered banking competitions and attended talks in my free time.

Join civil service - BEIS - they are haemorrhaging staff atm - maybe not high pay to begin with but with a few years of policy experience behind you, you become a more attractive prospect for private companies who work in the same space. And they are very age positive and flexible. Although the biggest recruitment drive is in Border Force atm - they are recruiting thousands and the threshold is low (I know a recruiter involved in it) - do well and move to another dept.

I am AAT qualified. Kids got in the way of going on to do CIMA
I was stay at home parent while kids were small. Returned to work 6 years ago.
Took me 5 years to get back to a similar pre-kids career level.

If you want to do finance I would skip AAT and head straight to CIMA or similar as you will not earn big money with just AAT level.

Try and find an entry level job that offers a study package and work your way up.

Get into FinTech - you could look into positions like Customer Success or Support. Technology is booming and they always appreciate people who have real life experience, not just software.

AAT is not paid well, in order to become a higher earner you need to qualify as a chartered accountant (look into ACCA, CIMA and ACA). I did AAT and then ACCA and looking back I wish I didn’t bother with AAT

If you have a degree, look at studying for ACCA rather than continuing with AAT; when recruiting I'd always consider part qual ACCA but wouldn't really rate AAT for a role or organisation where I was trying to get someone that is going to develop and grow.
Also, look at other sectors - in banking you might get high £££ eventually, but at the base you have, as you have found, lots of junior roles doing limited/repetitive work. In a smaller organisation, you might not get a big increase in salary initially, but exposure to broad range of experience would give you more to sell on your CV when you move to you next role - or progress within the organisation

There are two areas where their is a future in accounts/finance:

Firstly, the IT/Data side - something more like financial data analysis or manging implementing new software, rather than just producing accounts. There may be more opportunities if you come at it from an IT angle and research IT careers, or look at data-crunching jobs using SQL and other tools.
You don't need to learn coding - IT is a huge sector with lots of jobs that don't need you to code.

Secondly, Finance Business Partnering, where your job is to explain the accounts to non-financial managers/directors and help them with plans for their department. However to get into this you usually need to have ACA/ACCA/CIMA.

These days, working in an accounts department for a company will never get you far, even if you rise to become the Manager of the team. You would have to become a Finance Director to make real money, and the competition would be enormous.

Banking is a separate sector, which I don't know anything about.