Moving from medicine to HF/AM (in Canada)?
Hi guys,
To get right to it, I'm in a bit of a weird situation. I recently graduated from CEGEP (junior college equivalent in Quebec) and am starting university in about a week. I applied to McGill wanting to go to business school and eventually complete the Honours in Investment Management program. I got into Desautels, but I also got into med school and decided to do that. I know it sounds weird, but just think that instead of doing a bachelor's degree in 4 years I'm doing an MD in 5.
The problem is that while I think I like medicine, I'm also interested long term in working in working in HF/AM or even as an allocator, strat and other related roles in investing.
I think that I have a pretty descent grasp of a lot of the important stuff in finance despite my lack of formal financial education. I'm interested in systematic equity investing/factor investing and am familiar with a lot of the academic work in that space. I've read a lot of Fama-French/Novy-Marx/Lu Zhang papers + practitioner research too from AQR, DFA, CFM, etc. I've also read a few FI relative value books and papers and find that cool too.
My question is wether or not it's even possible for me to be competitive for jobs in those fields or just any finance/investing-related positions coming from a medical background. I'd guess that healthcare ER/VC would be my best bet, but I'm a bit more drawn to quantitative/systematic investing… Can I do that from ER at least? Maybe at a pension fund?
Also, is there anything I should be doing in med school or afterwords to maximize my chances of pivoting to that space? I'm willing to get an MBA, but I'm not even sure if I'd be a competitive applicant as a doctor. Would a finance internship in med school help? Could I even get a recognized internship or are those directed solely to finance majors? Would biostats research/publications help for quant roles or is that out of the picture?My school (UdeM - University of Montreal) is somewhat well known for that and I'm already somewhat involved there anyways. Would getting a CFA/CAIA charter at some point help, or completing the CSC?
I'm not looking for definite answers to any of these questions, but I'm curious as to how I should generally try to proceed if I want to make the switch. I know that there isn't much traffic on the medicine -> finance road, especially not in Canada, and that that problem is made worse by how small the buy side is here, but I'd love to hear what you guys would do to be competitive if you were in my position.
Thanks everyone.
Oh, and for those still reading, how badly did I mess up with my decision? I figured that going to McGill wasn't worth it with how random getting into HIM is + the difficulty of going to the US from Canada now (basically rules out the US buy side right?) but now I'm worried that I backed myself in a corner. And before anyone yells at me for the opportunity cost of going to med school, it's just one more year than a bachelor's and I got a full scholarship + a stipend, so I won't have any debt if I want to switch out of med…
There's not a lot of HC specific depth relative to the US unfortunately.
I might suggest looking at the bios of the teams at Lumira, BDC and Sagard (buyside), DRI (royalties I think) and Bloom Burton (sell-side) to give a you sense for where they come from, how your background stacks up, and how to best sell your experience.
Thanks, will check those firms out! +SB
To add to this, DWHP on the private side is good. I’d also check healthcare focused venture firms, and even the teams at the pensions. Another route is also equity research covering healthcare, probably a more natural pivot
If you’re certain you want to go into finance after university, go to Desautels. UdeM has a great med program but for finance nothing beats the McGill alumni network
My admittedly wimpy answer is that I wasn't completely certain about wanting a career in finance so I chose med. And while the Desautels brand/network does indeed seem strong, I was still pretty discouraged looking at their placements. Non-HIM placements seem terrible and even lots of HIM students appear stuck in ECM/DCM roles or IB but at banks like NBC. The buyside exits from those roles looked rather limited to me (could be wrong here) and I'm not really interested in working in either of them long term (would definitely rather be a physician) so I turned Desautels down. Also, just getting into HIM at all seemed like a bit of crapshoot, which made the decision easier.That said, I completely get the notion that finance education > med education for working in finance. I'd just rather break in through an MBA or networking (even if it means that some jobs will be inaccessible) vs rolling the dice in undergrad.
NBF M&A/TMT exits very well to pensions and similar to big 5 except for the one-off players like Onex/Brookfield/etc., would worry first about even getting your foot in any IB door lol
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