Career conversations: Building bridges from engineering to asset management

Back in 2008, I was still in high school, and that was when the great financial crisis began. My economic teacher started to introduce me about the real world, about finance, about economics. So that kind of sparked my interest in finance and economics. I'm Jeffrey. I'm currently a multi asset portfolio manager at Barings.

Since I was a kid, I've always been liking problem solving, playing puzzles, and playing board games with my family and friends. So that's naturally led me into the science and medical space.  

When I first touched on economics and finance, it was back in 2008, and it was a really interesting time. So that was the time that I get to explore more about what central banks can do, what are central bank policy, and how does it affect our real life as well.  

So I started as an investment banking analyst, and it was very challenging. The learning curve was very steep, but what I learned the most from my internship in Korea was really how connected financial market is with our real world. I get to see more real life examples of how transaction works, how the banking system can help the economy strive.  

I think as an engineer background student, I've never had a chance to get exposed to a structured financial program. I do get to learn bits and pieces from the internet, or from different bloggers, but I never had a chance to have a structured way of learning it.

And I realized that participating in a CFA® Program can help me to manage my time much more efficiently, as well as covering more comprehensive curriculum and details. I realized that a lot of the tools, especially in portfolio management, helped me in real life and even in my current job as well.

Finance is a career that you are forever learning and CFA® Institute and Society has provided a lot of opportunities for the Institute member to continue to learn in different topics such as ESG and climate change related issues.  

I think being open minded is very important if you want to have a career in finance. And to be honest, I think as an engineer or scientific background student, I share a lot of the concerns that science students have as well, which is a lot of the professional terminology in the financial markets are pretty scary. But in fact, if you keep an open mind, a lot of that scientific knowledge or analytical skill set are in fact very transferable.

For example, if you are doing math equations in your engineering exam, in fact the same toolkit that you can leverage on, it's also transferable to when you're analyzing in the financial market as well.  

I think in finance change is constant. The thing keep me awake every day is the change in the real world. I love seeing changes and I love seeing how that change would impact our real lives as well as in the financial markets.