The universities to attend if you want a new banking job in Asia

An Ivy League degree may be almost a prerequisite for getting a job at Goldman Sachs, but in Singapore and Hong Kong most finance professionals are progressing their careers with qualifications from less prestigious universities.

We’ve analysed the universities attended by candidates registered on eFinancialCareers who have changed jobs in Singapore or Hong Kong in the past 12 months to produce the percentage-based chart below (institutions with a share of less than 0.75% have been excluded).

Source: eFinancialCareers candidate database

The most popular universities for recent job-movers, by a considerable margin, are the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University – also based in Singapore. Banks in the city state are looking to hire more local talent and many of these candidates also attended local universities – Singapore Management University, Singapore Institute of Management and even Temasek Polytechnic are all in the top-10.

A large number of job seekers over the past year were alumni of seven Hong Kong universities, although the numbers were spread fairly evenly between them and only the University of Hong Kong could muster a share over 5%.

While the results suggest that a degree from a local university will help you get a banking job in Singapore or Hong Kong, foreign universities are still fairly well represented on our chart. The University of London has an impressive 5.36% share, for example, while Imperial College London and the London School of Economics also make the cut.

Elite Oxbridge and Ivy League degrees were not to be found in great numbers among finance professionals who’ve moved jobs in Hong Kong and Singapore in the past year, however. The University of California is the only US college on our list, while two Chinese schools – Tsinghau and Peking – appear towards the bottom.

The rankings also highlight the growing attractiveness of Australian universities to Asian finance professionals – RMIT University is the sixth most popular institution, while candidates have also come from Monash, Murdoch, Macquarie, Curtin and the University of New South Wales.

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