Honing Financial Acumen and Life Skills Through an MBA

In today's volatile banking sector increasingly usurped by robo-advisors and fintech platforms, remembering the names of your clients' kids isn't enough for bankers to clinch a deal. Instead, possessing a deep knowledge of market forces as well as the nuances of different investment vehicles are key for banking professionals to gain an edge over their peers.

That was the mindset behind Daryl Ho’s decision in 2014, when he signed up for a year-long Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the Singapore Management University Lee Kong Chian School of Business (SMU LKCSB).

At that point, he had landed a job as a relationship manager at OCBC Bank with an aspect of product sales, and it was worlds apart from his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering. “I realised I was selling products which I did not fully understand, and it reached a point where I wasn’t sure my clients benefitted from my recommendations,” Daryl recalls.

In order to expand his knowledge in the areas of business and finance and better serve his clients, Daryl felt it was time to pursue a postgraduate education, and the MBA was the right way to go.

Picking SMU was an easy decision, he says. Many of Daryl’s friends had completed their undergraduate studies here, so he was already familiar with SMU’s interactive seminar-style pedagogy, and keen to experience it for himself. He also had colleagues who were SMU alumni, and “interacting with them at work gave me a positive impression of their skills in problem-solving and the way they presented themselves”.

Working hard and smart

Daryl decided to quit his job to focus on his studies, and he proved to be an excellent student, making the Dean’s List and even snagging an internship as a fixed income credit analyst.

While it was challenging to juggle this internship with his academic commitments, he found a way that improved his time management and that also resulted in more effective learning for himself.

“I chose to do finance-related lessons at night, so that I could apply the theories I learned in class to the work I did during the day. Seeing the knowledge I acquired at school come to life in my daily tasks helped motivate me to learn further,” explains Daryl.

Today, he is a portfolio manager with AIA Investment Management, and co-manages close to US$20 billion in assets across Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. “When I left banking to further my studies, I had no certainty in what I would do upon graduation. I never would have guessed that the MBA could have set me on my current path.”

Classroom lessons for workplace success

A lot of what he learned at SMU has been invaluable in his current work. For instance, one of his key responsibilities is the assessment of risk involved in the effective deployment of assets. Because he learnt macroeconomics and financial analysis, he is able to inform his decision-making process with a big-picture outlook that enables him to formulate business management strategies that are responsive to potential economic threats, and make incisive assessments of companies’ financial health.

“On several occasions, I was able to forecast whether a company’s financials was going to improve or deteriorate ahead of rating agencies,” says Daryl.

The MBA programme also prepared Daryl for his current job in other less tangible ways. For instance, international students typically make up 65 per cent of each SMU MBA cohort, which makes for a very “multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary environment”, as he puts it.

This gave him an open-minded outlook and the confidence to interact with people from all walks of life at work. Besides helping him to contribute more effectively to his company, this attitude is also a useful way to approach life and learning, he believes. “It’s important to leave any arrogance at the door and know it’s not just the professors you will be learning from, but also your fellow students.”