Are prospective IB Analysts cooked?
Hello all,
I am a first year at a target university in the UK. I'm just wondering how cooked I am considering the rise of AI and its applications to the finance industry.
I feel like it's almost a matter of time before IB goes the way of computing and entry level positions are eradicated because a robot can just do it better.
Can anyone with insights confirm/deny my concerns and if it is true what can I do to improve my odds?
Many thanks monkeys.
I too fear this, but what you have to consider is that investment banks train the whole finance ecosystem for the most part. Outside from some niche programs by PE firms and HFs that recruit out of undergrad, IB is the only entity in the industry that creates thousands of readymade excel slaves annually. AI will make the work of existing analysts more efficient and of higher quality.
Buddy, do you think a VP will have more satisfaction telling an Analyst to align logos at 3am or ChatGPT... you tell me
Anyone who says this has never worked a day in IB lmao. We are literally still at the point where you can’t use certain excel formulas because clients are still using 2003 version of Excel. We still have MDs that print everything out and physically write comments because they still don’t know how to use PowerPoint.
Yeah and ChatGPT cannot do multiplication properly. No way that's happening.
There's so much shit junior bankers do though that should be AI.
"Refresh all the charts with market data for XXX date"
"Size all the logos the same then distribute evenly across this area"
"Change X input to this and re-output"
Stuff like that should be AI......
Don't quote me on this but you have until at least 2030 before this becomes a more serious concern imo
I graduate in 2027 so I have 3 years to make it to MD
bruh you're stressing for no reason. You're fine dude
There is literally no way. The MDs have a hard time opening a PDF. They wouldn’t know how to explain to AI what they want because they struggle enough trying to explain it to humans they work with.
This industry is in the Stone Age. AI taking analyst jobs should be the least of your concerns.
I had an MD who had an issue with PDF attachment so I had to copy+paste two bullet points in email to him so he could read it. Fucking idiot.
Yeah they need a massive amount of support to do anything
I think we have some ways to go. I’m hitting the prime of my career and I don’t own a computer and don’t feel the need to own one. We’ll need humans for a while,
At least at the start, it's going to be a tool to help juniors be more efficient. Idk, just off the top of my head, annoying shit like tick and tie numbers and conform formatting across pages, cross reference numbers with public filings etc. Maybe that means smaller headcount when it comes to recruiting?
Would be absurd to replace juniors with AI from the get go. For as hard and fast as we work, shit moves notoriously slow. Maybe eventually.
Anyone who thinks this has clearly never worked in IB. Yeah there are small things that probably can/should be automated (page numbering, company profiles, etc), but overall the IB world is very archaic. The MDs literally refuse to open PPT or Excel, you think they’re going to embrace AI anytime soon?
This is the correct answer. Best of luck convincing them that AI would more than likely be more accurate at numerical exercises. They would choose burnt out 22 year olds over quantum computing even.
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